


hanging on by a thread

by syzygies (astroblemish)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Everyone Loves Mark Lee (NCT), M/M, Magical Realism, Witches, red string of fate - the remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28548045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astroblemish/pseuds/syzygies
Summary: Everybody falls in love with Mark, which is the problem with his stupid curse to begin with. Luckily, Chenle believes he can help --so long as he doesn’t succumb to the curse too.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 28
Kudos: 106





	hanging on by a thread

**Author's Note:**

> i think the only other person who wants this ship to sail as much as i do is chenle himself... if you took a shot every time chenle logged on and spewed some lovey nonsense about mark then logged off you'd die of alcohol poisoning
> 
> new year new me... same old bullshit 😔

* * *

Chenle doesn’t know what to make of the guy sitting at his living room table.

Sunny must sense his awkwardness, because he keeps fluttering around nervously, hopping back and forth as the stranger with wide eyes watches. He isn’t a witch, that much is obvious, because he seems a little too uncomfortable in the face of the Zhong family store. However, for someone who _isn’t_ a witch, he has way too much magic clouding him in a thick miasma.

Not that even the noxious cloud of nerves and expired magic gives it away; for a single human being, this guy has _way_ too many threads, loose and tumbling out of him and spiralling in every which direction over the floor, all of them a deep, rich red.

“So… you’re Mark?” Chenle asks, placing the teacups down and sitting opposite the guy with a chin in his palm. Mark nods, his shoulders up and his back straight like he’s had manners drilled into him with an iron rod. It’s cute. “My mum couldn’t help you?”

“No,” Mark says, and his voice cracks a little even through the adorable Canadian accent so he clears his throat, and Chenle hides his smile into his palm. _Sooo_ cute. “She said uh-- she said her son is better for the job.”

“Hmmm,” Chenle hums, fingertip dancing over the rim of his teacup. It’s not often his mum sends him clients unless she doesn’t think they’re worth her time. Given by the amount of threads pouring out of Mark’s chest like his heart has gone through a meat grinder and the strands have been spun, Mark looks like he’d be worth _any_ witch’s time. Had she seen something in his tapestry? Or… Chenle’s eyes follow the gold thread binding him to Sunny in the corner of the room by his perch, pulling at the leaves of some of their spider grass and taking them to the new nest he’s started building in his cage.

Is it a test of his foretold _greatness_?

“Well, she’s told me next to nothing.” Chenle gives a big shrug, leaning back. Mark can’t be much older than him, and his extreme, nervous discomfort makes Chenle feel the need to put in extra effort to appease him. He knows his family --well, his family’s _name_ \-- makes anyone uncomfortable, witch or not, and it’s something Chenle has always loathed. “So what’s the run down?”

“Okay, well uh--” Mark fidgets, wringing his wrists in front of him. It dislodges the threads tied to his heart that are spooled all over the tabletop, not that Mark can see them. “--I need help with getting rid of… a curse.”

“Alright,” Chenle says slowly. “Curses aren’t really… I mean, wouldn’t a hexwitch be better for you than a spellweaver? Curses are a little bit out of our jurisdiction, usually we’re more--” Chenle makes a vague hand gesture. “--Fate, destiny, yadda yadda.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s what I thought too, but the hexwitch I saw told me to come here.”

Interesting. Chenle sits up a little straighter.

“Okay, so… what’s the deal with this curse?” For all intents and purposes, spellweavers don’t _do_ curses. Chenle has only met a curse-bearer enough times to count on one hand. Hexwitchery is devious at best and dangerous at worst --few have mastered the craft, and those who do know better than to curse some poor university student.

At least, Chenle assumes Mark is a university student, given by the wire-framed glasses over his face and the backpack stuffed with papers at his feet. He has the manners of one and, given by the rolled up chinos and streetwear t-shirt, the aesthetic.

“I didn’t know I was cursed at first,” Mark begins, and leans forward onto his elbows, both hands curled around his teacup. He looks down at the liquid as he speaks, like telling his tea might be easier than telling Chenle. His nervousness is endearing. “My family aren’t-- we aren’t magical, and I don’t-- the witchdoctor said the curse hadn’t developed until later in life. It was dormant when I was a kid, that’s why they didn’t notice.”

Chenle’s eyes widen, and he wonders if he’s feeling a little out of his depth. A lifelong curse? Those are serious things. Luckily, Mark staring down at his tea means he doesn’t notice the gravity of such a thing hitting Chenle like a truck. The last thing this poor guy needs is a reason to feel more nervous.

Mark lets out a long breath. “Well, basically, the curse is-- at least, what _I_ think it is, is…” He raises his chin, and finally looks at Chenle dead in the eyes. “I’ve been cursed so that men fall in love with me.”

There’s a long, heavy moment of silence where even Sunny freezes up in his nest. Nothing but the empty space and the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway to fill it.

Chenle blinks, once, twice. He bursts into laughter.

“ _What_ ,” he wheezes, and slaps his own leg. “ _What kind of curse is that?_ ”

“Man I’m _serious_ ,” Mark whines, and watches with a deep set frown as Chenle catches his breath and wipes tears from his eyes. “It’s not as fun as it sounds.”

“What? Are you homophobic?”

“ _No_.” Mark hunches his shoulders, going back to stare at his cup. “You wouldn’t understand what it’s like, okay? When somebody is in love with you because of magic and not because--” he cuts off suddenly, embarrassed, and sinks deeper into his seat.

“Oh.” Chenle winces, scratching his cheek. “Yeah, okay, I can see how that’d be bad.” Mark still looks defensive, and Chenle feels like the world’s number one ass, so he pushes down any reflex to laugh and starts again. “How does it work exactly? Is it every man you meet, or…?”

“Not quite,” Mark explains, just as Chenle glances down at his mess of threads to make sure none of them are forming towards Chenle. He can see the translucent threads of meeting between their heads, of course, and wisps in the air that suggest they’re destined to meet again, but Chenle never pays attention to those ones. He’s much more interested in the deep red threads of yarn tumbling out from Mark’s sternum. “It’s like, uh, if I ever like someone… they instantly fall in love with me?”

“Oh.” Chenle bites his tongue to hold back any remark of _that’s convenient_ , because while part of him can idealise how much easier life would be if that were the case, he can see how it might be a curse. Honestly, with the amount of magic clinging to Mark, Chenle wonders if maybe this is a warped blessing. He’s only read about the theory in class, never seen it in practice --blessings from higher powers that manifest into curses when the bearer decides they no longer want it. “But… only men?” It’s an interesting specificity.

“Yes,” Mark hisses, hiding his face behind a palm. “The hexwitch who cursed my family she-- she wanted my family’s bloodline to end with me.”

“By… encouraging you elope with a man?” Chenle’s jaw drops open. “ _Wow_ , that is some inventive cursing.”

“I don’t think she thought it through…” Mark mumbles, fiddling with a rosary ring on his index finger. “The curse was only intent, but it manifested as this. That’s what the hexwitch I asked about it said.”

Chenle mulls it over, supposing it checks out. There goes his theory about it being a warped blessing, though --just as he was getting excited to see one in the flesh. Magic born through will and intent can manifest in any number of ways, no matter how bizarre, and extended periods of time can dilute the process too. This is certainly up there on the top 10 most random magic tricks, though.

“Don’t you have any siblings?”

“I do,” Mark answers. “But my older brother is, um…” He clears his throat. “He doesn’t want kids.”

“Huh.” How fascinating. While a little bit beyond Chenle’s paygrade, he can’t claim he’s not intrigued. “What did your parents do to piss a rogue hexwitch off this much?”

“It’s actually a prophecy from my family a long time ago,” Mark explains. “My ancestors were witch hunters. Every generation we’re told that the Lee child born before the turn of the millenia will be the last.”

So Mark _is_ older than Chenle, which is strange, since he’s so cute.

“Yikes,” Chenle says. “A lifelong curse that’s a prophecy? That’s not easy magic to undo, man.”

“I know.” Mark looks defeated, and it twinges inside Chenle’s chest. He catches from the corner of his eye as one of the threads of meeting solidifies and grows stronger with Chenle’s sympathy, knowing that his need to help Mark manifests a stronger connection between them. Damn it. “I know it’s a lot to ask for, but I’m desperate. You don’t even need to remove the curse maybe just help me-- lessen it? I’ll give anything, man. Spellweavers are my only hope.”

Chenle purses his lips just as the thread above their head solidifies with the decision he’s been fated to make.

“Fine,” he relents, and Mark’s face lights up. “I’ll _try_ , but I can’t promise results.” This sort of magic is beyond any known spellweaver, which is why Chenle’s mum sent Mark to _him_. He can see now, with all the threads pooling out of Mark’s heart, why a fancy tapestry isn’t going to help. Chenle really is Mark’s last hope, and he tries not to let that pressure get to him. “Come with me.”

The last thing Chenle wants to do is lay Mark’s heart bare when his aunties could walk in at any moment. Chenle gestures for Mark to follow him upstairs to his bedroom above the store on the ground floor, holding the door open for him and suddenly feeling self-conscious. Since he isn’t a working witch yet, he doesn’t have his own workspace. Maybe he should ask his mum for one in the future.

Sunny, who had fluttered onto his shoulder for the walk, takes his place at the perch beside the four-poster bed. There are clothes strewn over the floor, remnants of Sunny’s many nests, and the sticky mini basketball hoop he’d stuck to the wall is lopsided. Vulnerability for vulnerability, Chenle supposes.

“Woah, sick bedroom,” Mark compliments, bouncing at the edge of the bed. “Is that a PS5? Do you have the new Spider-man game?”

“Yes and yes Mark, _focus_. We can play after.”

“Right, sorry.” Mark returns to sitting up straight, and Chenle orders him to lie down on the bed, cupping Sunny into his palms and placing him on Mark’s stomach.

“That tickles,” Mark giggles, which is super cute, but now isn’t the time for that either.

“Mark, I’m going to do something that isn’t going to feel very good,” Chenle warns, “but it’s necessary if you want me to understand this curse better. Are you okay with that?”

“Uh,” Mark seems to doubt himself, then swallows, his outrageously large adam’s apple bobbling with the movement. “No, that’s fine, yeah. Go for it. I trust you.”

He _shouldn’t_ , not any witch, but especially one he’s just met. Chenle’s beginning to understand why this curse is so detrimental to someone like Mark.

Chenle nods. “Okay Sunny, let’s do this.”

“Your familiar is named Sunny?”

“Yeah, it’s short for Sunny Side-up.”

Mark pales. “You named your bird after cooked eggs?”

“ _Shh_ ,” Chenle hisses. “I need to focus.”

Mark still looks disturbed at the revelation, but allows Chenle to work. Sunny tilts his head as he examines the threads over Mark’s chest, plucking at the ones with his beak where he senses the most potential. This is where their teamwork comes in, as Chenle pulls them with his magic to unravel the knotted mess protecting Mark’s heart.

Usually, this sort of procedure would take time and produce resistance. People aren’t often content to having their chests picked at the seams and unraveled. However, with Mark, it’s disturbingly easy, and Chenle checks Mark’s face for any sign of discomfort but doesn’t spot it. Mark just keeps blinking up at him with wide, curious eyes, fascinated by the display of magic he most likely can’t see.

As Chenle pulls apart the seams to glance at Mark’s heart, he’s horrified by what he sees. Mark’s heart is steadily beating and a healthy red, but it’s absolutely _covered_ in woven threads all across it, suffocating it. It’s a sad sight to see, a heart so healthy and constant strangled and stained with the black char of a curse and rotted threads.

“Does it hurt?” Chenle asks quietly, filled with sudden pity for this boy with a bleeding heart that’s been sewn up with unwanted threads. The sutures of the curse are rough and uneven and marr an otherwise perfect heart.

“Not really?” Mark replies. “I mean, I dunno what you’re doing, but--”

“Not my magic,” Chenle corrects, and reaches for one of the thickest threads looped around the base of Mark’s heart. It’s the colour of blood and frayed at the edges, crusty with sadness and regret. Just his fingertips brushing beneath it seem to make Mark wince. “This… all of this.”

“Oh.” Whatever emotions tugging at the thread have brought to the surface, it brings an air of uncharacteristic solitude and solemness to his face with it. “Yeah… it does.”

Even Sunny is piteous, hopping back and forth on his feet around the open hole in Mark’s chest. There are a few strings that are thinner than the other, and he tugs at them with his beak, trying to break them. They don’t budge, only make Mark wince.

“This curse has really messed you up,” Chenle mumbles, and waves his hand so that the entire thing seals shut, only the bodies of the thread tumbling out remaining. “How many boys have fallen in love with you?”

“I think I’ve lost count,” Mark admits, sitting up and rubbing a palm over his chest. Sunny lets out a gentle coo and nudges his beak against Mark’s thigh for comfort. Mark softens and brushes his knuckle just above Sunny’s beak. He even knows how to handle birds… how cute. “Is it really that bad?”

“Bad is an understatement,” Chenle blurts, then backtracks at the look of panic on Mark’s face. “I mean-- some of it can be fixed. Definitely.” He gets off the bed, self-consciously kicking the clothes strewn over the rug into a pile. “Even if I can’t get rid of the curse, the threads tying you to all these men can be broken or unmade, but that’s another thing entirely.”

“Threads…?” Mark asks, eyebrows quirked in bepuzzlement. Chenle sighs. He usually hates educating humans who don’t do a general google debrief before seeking Zhong business, but he can’t bring it within himself to hold it against Mark.

“You know that’s what spellweavers deal with, right?”

“I mean, yeah, but I thought it was all--” Mark makes a vague hand gesture. “Tapestries and tarot cards. That kinda stuff.”

“It _is_ , but there are threads in everything.” Chenle kneels at the foot of the bed, and materialises one of his own purple heart threads by cupping his palms beneath it. It’s the one he shares with his mother, knowing she won’t mind the sharp tugs. “Do you know the red string of fate? It’s called _yīnyuán hóngxiàn_ ,” Chenle says. “In Chinese myth, it’s tied around the ankles of true lovers.”

Mark nods, attentive. “I’ve seen it in anime.”

Chenle closes his eyes and lets out a brief, pained breath, before regaining himself.

“Yes, well, imagine spellweaving also including that,” Chenle explains. “Threads are what tie us together, they symbolise our connections to one another. They can bind, tie, separate, tangle… they’re not just the future, they’re the present and the past too.” He lets go of the thread, and it falls limp, disappearing from Mark’s view.

“You are _covered_ in them,” Chenle continues. “Far more than any person should be.” He holds his hands up beneath Mark’s chest, and watches his eyes widen in shock as hundreds of red threads manifest between Chenle’s fingers. “That’s why it hurts. They’re suffocating you, because the curse prevents them from falling off over time, and you’re strangled by love you can’t let go of.”

“Red threads break?” Mark asks, just as Chenle releases the threads and lets them fade away. “I thought the whole point is that they’re fate.”

“They… can be, but not always.” Chenle doesn’t want to get into this now. “What matters is we have two options: I can focus on cutting the threads so you’re less burdened, or…”

“Or…?”

“Or, with _way_ more time,” Chenle forewarns, “I can try and find a way to unravel the curse altogether. With or without all the excess threads, your choice.”

Mark ponders that for a moment, picking at the embroidered designs of birds and flowers on Chenle’s comforter. It makes him feel a little subconscious --is it too cutesy?

“Can I think about it?” Mark asks. “I mean, with payment and stuff…”

Oh, right. Chenle forgets that money is a problem for other people --talk about checking your privilege. Embarrassing.

“I’m only a student witch,” Chenle reassures. Telling Mark he’s a once in a lifetime opportunity probably isn’t as flattering to humans as it might be to witches --Chenle is fascinated and determined both. “I don’t have my license yet, and this is good practice for me too. Money isn’t important.”

“Practice,” Mark repeats skeptically, then glances at Chenle’s four poster bed as if to confirm the latter half of his sentence.

“Um, I mean-- research,” Chenle amends. “Not many people have curses that manifest like this. I’m happy to help for magic’s sake.” Not that Chenle is going to put in all this time and effort for free, but he has ways of cajoling people into paying for him. The benefits of inherent cuteness.

“Okay uh, thanks man,” Mark says awkwardly, standing up from the bed as Sunny flutters back to his perch, watching with a curious head tilt. “What do you think is best, then?”

“I’ll need some time to formulate a plan.” Chenle shrugs. “Just give me your number and we can meet up later in the week.” He still has an essay due at the end of the week that he hasn’t started, and a group assignment at the end of the month. Adding Mark’s impossible problem to his list of responsibilities isn’t a great thought, but Chenle might be able to weave this into extra credit if he plays his cards right.

Mark agrees, and they swap their phones as they give each other their contact information. Mark is puppy-eyed enough that Chenle lets him start his own save file on the PS5, but it’s only twenty minutes or so before Mark claims he should get home in time for dinner.

“I’ll text you?” he offers, like the good boy Chenle is quickly learning he is.

“I’ll text _you_ ,” Chenle corrects, and leads Mark to the front door. “Good luck man, try not to make too many men fall in love with you~”

“Har- _har_.” The door back to the store front swings shut behind him and Chenle is left alone with Sunny on his shoulder and the ticking of the grandfather clock.

_Interesting_ , Sunny transmits through the bond, in the brief language of birds. _Strange_.

“Yeah,” Chenle agrees, petting the top of Sunny’s head and watching all the threads to Mark’s heart slide across the floor until they disappear. “Strange indeed.”

Chenle finishes his paper on dreamweavers as an independently formed subsect of spellweavers five minutes before turnitin closes. Not his finest work, but nowhere near his worst, either.

To celebrate, he orders pizza and watches a movie in bed while Sunny flutters around the room with antsy energy. He can’t blame him; Chenle isn’t one for sitting still and doing schoolwork, and neither is his familiar. He prefers practical classes, anything that uses his hands. Better yet, he prefers magic outside of class altogether.

Thinking of classes makes him think about Mark, and wonder how he’s going to squeeze that in on top of everything else. Already, Chenle has started jotting down ideas in the notebook he keeps under his pillow, but it’s hard to make a plan for something when it’s not in front of him. He’s read as much on the internet as he can about curses, but thinks he’ll be hitting the family library up later too. Chenle considers himself confident in his abilities, but something about Mark makes him feel out of his depth.

He sits up, inspiration striking, and pulls out his tablet to start sketching a design. Wards and runes and charms aren’t Chenle’s forte, which means he also has to toss through his comforter looking for his phone. His thumb finds Renjun’s contact first, but then he remembers himself and taps back.

_hey_

_u up?_

_yes_

_do you have to phrase it like that?_

_ye_

_make sure u pick up_

It takes two rings until Kun answers the video call with: “You won’t even let me put on a shirt, will you?”

“Ew are you _naked_? That’s so gross.”

“It’s hot and I’m in bed you ungrateful brat,” Kun hisses. “Why are you calling me?”

“I need your help with a design for a ward.”

“At one in the morning?”

“Yes.” Chenle scrambles for his iPad beside his pillow. “Which is a stronger design, do you think?” He flips between the two, side-by-side up to the phone camera.

“Can you just send them to me instead?” Kun says, squinting. “I can’t see shit.”

“Oh.” Chenle does so, and watches Kun’s response, flipping through his phone with a hum.

“What is… this a ward for, exactly?” he asks, eyebrows raised. Both designs depict the same symbol, just in different manners: the two of cups, two silhouettes with intertwined goblets, except instead of the typical caduceus, Chenle has replaced it with a bleeding heart wrapped in threads. “Are you trying to get someone dumped like, really, _really_ badly?”

“What? No.” Chenle frowns, looking at his designs again. “It’s just a temporary solution until I can think of something better. It’s for a client that’s cursed.”

“ _Client_ ,” Kun teases. “Last I checked you’re not old enough to have your practicing license, yet.”

“No, but my mum is still allowed to act as a supervisor for me.” Chenle rolls his eyes. “Will it work or not?”

“Well, that depends on the curse.”

“Client confidentiality,” Chenle says smugly.

“How do you expect me to help, exactly?”

“Well if you _have_ to know, people fall in love with him.” It’s a succinct way of putting it, though Chenle supposes the gender target doesn’t matter as much. “I’m hoping this can stop red threads from forming, at least until I can unravel the rest.”

“The curse is strong enough to pull threads?” Chenle nods. “Woah. How many did he have?”

“Way too many,” Chenle mumbles, reminiscing on the sheer pain radiating out of Mark’s broken, stitched up heart. “It’s no way for anyone to live.”

“Makes sense why your mum would ask you for help then,” Kun says. “Your ward is a little weak, though. Tarot symbols have too many subjective meanings, it weakens the spell.”

“Well sorry for using what I’m good with,” Chenle grumbles. “That’s why I’m asking for help! You know I nearly flunked my warden subjects.”

“Yeah yeah, abuse my expertise for free.” Kun rummages around on something off-screen, flipping through thick books he keeps beside his bed because of course he does. His drive to improve makes Chenle exhausted just thinking about it. He frowns. “Xuxi,” he calls. “Any flowers for rejection?”

“Flowers for rejection?” Comes Yukhei’s deep voice as he stumbles into the room and his head pokes up in the corner of the screen. Ugh, _gross_. So that's why Kun had been naked. “Hi Chenle!!”

“Hello,” Chenle greets. “Anything to add?”

“What for?”

“A ward.”

“A ward, _hmmm_.” Yukhei hums long and hard. There are flowers in his hair now, even, woven through the dark locks and furling and unfurling in his thought. “Yellow carnations, maybe? They can mean disappointment and rejection. They’re a good _I’m_ _sorry_ flower but could work in this context too.” Chenle makes a noise of realisation and jots the notes beside his sketch on the ipad. “What’s this for?”

“A client.” Chenle waves his hands. “It’s complicated.”

“Okay!” Trust Yukhei to not poke any further as he smiles at Chenle. “How are your classes?”

“Fine, how’s the greenhouse?”

“Really good! Although the roses keep complaining that I give the baby’s breath way too much attention--”

“Okay, it’s one am,” Kun interrupts. “Can you guys talk about this during regular daylight hours?”

Chenle snorts. “Sure, old man.” He waves. “It was nice seeing you, Yukhei. Thanks for the help you two.”

“No problem!!!! Good luck with your client!!!” Kun hangs up before Chenle can open his mouth again, and it earns him an exasperated shake of the head to a blank screen. He searches up yellow carnations for reference, and adds them to the stencil until he’s satisfied, printing it out on solvy and tiptoeing to the office printer to grab it. He can hear his aunts down stairs tossing fortune sticks and laughing, but if his mum catches him up this late she’ll _kill_ him.

Back in bed, Sunny has already fluttered to find a hoop and the right sized needle, laying them out on the mattress.

“Thanks Sunny,” Chenle says, patting the top of Sunny’s head as he coos in gentle appreciation. He sticks the stencil to the back of the material he pulls through the hoop, and begins weaving his threads through the design. For the couple intertwining cups, he uses black thread, but the heart he does in red and the wreath of flowers on their heads he does yellow. His embroidery speed gets faster with each piece, and he’s finished in several hours equating to one and a half bad netflix films playing on his laptop at the foot of the bed.

Satisfied, Chenle pulls the material out of the hoop and holds it upside down. It’s spotty, so the magic flowing through the thread is patchy and not perfect. His subpar drawing skills aren’t helping, either --perhaps he _should_ ask Renjun for help once he’s not swamped with schoolwork. It’s makeshift and lopsided, but for now, it will do.

_wanna meet up sometime this weekend to fix ur little problem?_

_just to consider some options_

_haha wow you’re up late haha_

_when/where haha_

_I could say the same to u?_

_sunday brunch? i know a good spot near uni_

_haha okay sounds good man_

_👍_

Chenle smiles to himself. Mark types like he talks; it’s cute. As soon as the thought occurs in his mind, he sees the translucent new thread poking into his chest turn a semi-opaque baby pink, a thread of affection and excitement, of new beginnings.

_See u then :D_

Chenle arrives early on Sunday, just to one-up Mark and to get an excuse to leave the house. Sunday is always silk-song day, and Chenle does not want to get his tapestry woven and put up on the wall no matter how much his mum insists. Having a client excuse is one of the only things that’s ever worked in his nineteen years of life; it’s a blessing being able to avoid having his imminent fortune thrown up on the wall to have his aunts pick and prod at.

He finds a seat near the entrance so he’s easily spotted, and fixes his hair. The whole house had cooed and said he looked _very_ professional for his client meeting, and it makes Chenle feel like a kid. He just wants to be… cool-looking, for Mark, better than the pyjama shirt and tracksuit pants he’d been in last time, at least. He wants to seem professional and capable, and appearance is the first step.

Mark is ten minutes late, but he comes in with a large gust of wind and a tangle of threads at his feet that he nearly trips over without realising, stumbling over to Chenle’s table.

“Sorry,” he pants as he pulls out the chair opposite Chenle. “Overslept.”

“No worries man.” Mark’s glasses are lopsided, and his hair sticks out in every direction. He’s wearing a pink hoodie with the _LANY_ logo and ear buds are dangling out the front. “I like your jumper.”

“Oh.” Mark holds it out and looks down, like he needs to remember what he’s wearing. “Thanks man. I like your jacket, that design is awesome.”

“Thank you.” Chenle puffs up, showing off the flowers embroidered along the seam. “I did it myself.”

“Woah, really? With magic?” Chenle shakes his head. “Man what the hell, that’s cool.”

Chenle flushes, having not expected the sudden praise. “Thanks. Oh! Speaking of.” He reaches for his bag at his feet, pulling out the bundle of material. He’d folded it into a neat square and bound it with green silk rope that morning, hoping the opposite colour to red might enhance the ward’s power a little. “I embroidered you a charm. It’s hasty and will only last a few weeks at best, but it’s a temporary thing.”

“You made this for me?” Mark’s eyes go wide as he holds the design up. Chenle gestures for him to turn it upside down, which he does. “Woah, that’s awesome man! Thanks so much.”

“It’s my job,” Chenle tells him, and shifts in his seat a little. Mark is always so enthusiastic and genuine, it’s _so_ cute. “Carry it with you and it might deter some threads forming.” He glances down at Mark’s chest, the hundreds of red threads breaking through the _LANY_ logo. “Not all, but some.”

“No that’s great man what the hell, I wasn’t even expecting a temporary solution this soon.” Mark folds the design up carefully, tucking it into his hoodie pocket. “What else were you thinking might help?”

“Well…” Chenle trails off, looking down at the menu. “Should we order first?”

“Oh, okay.” Just like that, Mark goes along with his suggestion like it hadn’t been the most awkward avoidance of Chenle’s life. He rests his chin in his palm to hide his smile. _So fucking cute_. It’s a typical hipster bougie cafe; Chenle gets smashed avocado and Mark gets french toast. Chenle strikes up a few questions about Mark’s daily life just for the sake of conversation and to get a little more context. Knowing the curse-bearer will help unravel the curse that’s stuck to them, and he finds out Mark is a creative writing major hoping to be a novelist someday.

Somehow even that, on Mark Lee, is cute.

“What about you?” Mark asks.

“Me?” Chenle blinks. “I go to witch school.”

Mark frowns. “Man I figured _that_ but I mean like, what do you do there?” he clarifies. “Your family is like, super fortune-teller-y, right?”

Chenle shrugs. “Yeah, I guess so.” He pokes at his poached eggs to see if the outside will break while Sunny pecks at a few stray crumbs on the edge of his plate. “I’m not very good at it, though. Witches don’t declare majors until next year, so for now I’m just getting the requirements out of the way and seeing what sticks.”

“Oh. That sounds fun,” Mark offers. “I always wanted to be a witch when I was a kid, but my family kinda has a history of steering clear of magic.” He laughs, even though there’s nothing all that funny to laugh at. It makes Chenle smile in disbelief and endearment. “Must be cool trying out all the different magic types.”

“I guess.” Chenle shrugs. He doesn’t mention that he’s mediocre at all of them, and not fond of the ones he _is_ good at. He’s dreading divination next semester; all he has an affinity for are the threads pouring out of his classmate’s chests that give him headaches from the onslaught of colour. “I just want to pass the qualifications to get my license and open my own practice. My magic is kinda… well, there’s not a major for it.”

“You don’t wanna work at your family’s shop?” Chenle shakes his head. “Why not?”

“Would _you_ want to work with your parents after living with them all your life?”

Mark laughs. “Fair enough,” he concedes. “The place is super cool but I’m sure yours would be way cooler. Less mom decor, that’s for sure.”

It makes Chenle snort. “It’s so fucking tacky, right?”

“Oh for sure,” Mark agrees. “Who needs that many candles?”

“Or _looms_?”

They both laugh; it’s just too easy. Mark feels more like a cute boy Chenle would meet at uni to become friends with, rather than a client. The thread between them thrums green with vitality and life, the symbol of a new beginning. It’s tied between their wrists, its colours still iridescent and shifting.

“Nah man, honestly your whole family seems cool, but I’m glad your mom gave me to you, y’know? I think you get it more.”

“Get what?”

“The curse? Everything?” Mark offers, laughing nervously. “I dunno. It’s easier to talk about with someone my age instead of some judge-y middle-aged woman.”

Chenle snorts. Yep, that sounds like anyone in his family, that’s for sure.

“Well, I’m glad you think so, because you’re gonna hate the next step.” Mark’s face falls in surprise, eyes widening and eyebrows lifting as he blinks at Chenle all innocent and unassuming. God it kills him. He wants to coo at Mark so bad but that isn’t cool nor professional. “I need to meet someone who’s been affected by your curse.”

Mark’s face twists into a grimace, just as Chenle had suspected it would.

“Do you _have_ to?” Mark asks with a wince. “I mean…”

“I know, it sucks, I’m sorry,” Chenle tells him. “But it’s easier for me to know how this curse works if I can see both sides of it. Is there anyone affected by it who knows about it? Or you don’t mind telling about it?”

Mark shifts in discomfort, rubbing the back of his head.

“Uh. I kinda haven’t told anyone. Ever. Other than my family and like… witches.” He looks like he’s just eaten a lemon. Or has IBS and is about to shit himself. Maybe both. “Telling someone is… kinda awkward.”

“Why?” Mark looks at him. “Ah. Because it’s like confessing?”

Mark nods, though not without a wince.

“I’m curious about the threads effects over time,” Chenle admits. “They’re still stuck to you even when they’re fraying. What happens to the boys you like who reciprocate openly?”

“I usually reject them,” Mark admits, finding something very interesting to poke at with the tip of his knife on his place. “I know it’s just the curse. Sometimes I can give off enough signs that they back-off before confessing, but I think they’re always affected by it.”

Chenle hums, mouth twisting in thought. “You couldn’t have always known about the curse though, right? What happens when you lean into its affects?”

Mark’s face stills into something uncharacteristically expressionless, and he says, “Does it matter right now?” His snappish tone surprises Chenle, even if it’s only a pinch of attitude. He’s already so used to Mark’s easy-going nature it catches him off-guard. “Sorry I just-- I dunno.”

“Oh, um. Okay.” Chenle shifts, suddenly feeling awkward. He’s not used to it around anyone, let alone Mark, but he can’t help feeling like he’s crossed a boundary. The thread between them flickers with the black of disdain and discomfort, it makes Chenle panic. “Well, maybe just think about it, okay? I’m not gonna push you to do anything you don’t want to. We can always like, knock one of them out and I can cast spells on them while they’re unconscious.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Only if we get caught.” Mark’s laugh makes Chenle grin. The thread between them thickens. Once it dies down and their plates are cleared away, Chenle asks, “Are weekends good for you? Since we need to meet up regularly.”

“Uh yeah, most of the time. Especially in the mornings.” Mark nods.

“If you’re not comfortable with that plan, I’ll think about some others,” Chenle tells him. “It will be good if you’re just around to let me poke at the threads. You can even come over and play spider-man, if you want.”

Mark smiles. “That sounds like a pretty sweet deal, man.” It softens around the edges. “I’ll… think about what you said, okay? I just have to-- think it through a little.”

“No of course, totally, I get it.” Chenle fidgets beneath the table, just relieved Mark hasn’t completely ruled out the option. “Take as long as you need. This won’t be a short process.”

Mark nods. Chenle offers they walk to the station together and Mark agrees; when Chenle covers the bills, he ignores Mark’s protests, even when Sunny says, _should client not pay?_

Chenle ignores that too.

He buys them both a takeaway coffee as they walk, watching Sunny flitter about in the open space in a comfortable silence. Familiars aren’t an unseen sight around this sight of town, so nobody bats an eye to the bright yellow bird flicking from branch to branch.

At one spot, his energy seems to settle and he perches on Mark’s shoulder, grooming the hair behind his ear. It’s humiliating for a witch to have their familiar so outwardly displaying their partner’s affection towards someone, but Mark doesn’t seem to notice it beyond a coo and a gentle pat of Sunny’s beak.

“He’s so cute,” Mark admires. “What kind of bird is he?”

Chenle watches Sunny preen at the compliment (as he himself does inwardly also. What? It’s _his_ familiar. It’s part of his soul).

“Southern masked weaver,” Chenle answers, holding a hand out for Sunny to flutter to and pose for Mark. Show-off --but that’s typical of male birds. “I’d never heard of them until we met.”

Chenle still remembers his thirteenth birthday well. Like all non-spellweaving magic, he’d always been a shoddy summoner, but his mother had still called in a familiar expert to help with drawing the circle and preparing the ritual. The threads that had emerged from the circle had seemed to taunt him, morphing into numerous shapes like it knew Chenle couldn’t decide too until it settled into a small blue egg. When he’d cupped it into his palms, it was still warm.

“Man that’s cool,” Mark praises, because being nice for Mark is as natural as breathing. “What does it symbolise? Oh shit, wait,” he blurts, “is that like, a personal question?”

Chenle snorts. “No, anyone can google it..” He gives Sunny a gentle pat then, sensing what he wants, places him back on Mark’s shoulder, who seems to sparkle under the attention of a small animal. God he’s so fucking cute. “Birds can mean all type of things, but usually it means their partner is focused on freedom. Restless yet craving the urge to settle. It can also mean being antsy, or peckish, or committed.” Chenle watches Mark pat Sunny carefully with a fond smile as he listens with wide, attentive eyes. “This particular species is… well, not many witches have them as familiars, let alone spellweavers. I’m not entirely sure.”

“Huh.” Mark’s mouth pouts cutely in thought as he looks upwards, deep in thought. “Spellweavers usually have spiders, right? That’s what your mom had.”

“Yeah,” Chenle says. “Spiders are the first weavers, they’re great at teaching how to manipulate the threads. They also have an affinity to the future, since they shed their skin to change into something new. Their molds are great for divination spells.”

Mark’s entire face seems to light up as he listens with sheer interest and curiosity.

“Doesn’t that freak you out? I mean--” he shudders. “If my mom had a spider on her shoulder all the time…”

Chenle laughs.

“I’m used to it,” he admits. “I’ve known Xihua since I was a baby. There are pictures of her weaving webs in the corner of my cot.”

Mark gives another full-body shudder which only makes Chenle laugh harder.

“Nightmare fuel,” he mumbles, earning another sharp cackle from Chenle. “Not the most motherly of familiars, is it?”

Chenle shrugs. “Spiders are misunderstood,” he says, gaze falling on a couple up ahead. A man and a woman holding hands, but their red threads lead in different directions. How tragic. “I mean, a lot of spiders let their young eat them alive to ensure they survive. That’s pretty dedicated mothering, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” Mark concedes. “What familiar does your dad have?”

Chenle shakes his head. “Zhong men aren’t witches,” he explains. “But they’re fated to marry spellweavers to pass on the blood.”

“How do you fit into that, then?”

“I’m the first male Zhong witch in generations,” he says, though not without a hint of pride as Sunny also puffs up. “At least in recorded history. We don’t really know why --my brother isn’t a witch too.”

“Huh. That’s cool then. Is that why your magic is so different?”

Chenle shrugs. “Maybe.” He picks at the embroidered design at the hem of his jacket. “Mum always says my first tapestry depicts greatness, which is how she knew I was going to be a witch even when the doctor said I was a boy. All my aunts think I’m destined for something great.” Mark laughs then, gentler than usual. It makes Chenle tip his head. “What?”

“You don’t look happy about it.”

“Oh…” He follows the line of one of Mark’s red threads, stretching into the horizon and beyond. “Well, that’s because I think fate is a load of crap. I should be able to make my own choices, not live out the prophecy of some stupid woven thread from before I was born.”

Mark laughs. “Wow, not every day you meet a spellweaver who doesn’t believe in fate.”

Chenle shoves him. “Shut up.” He folds his arms over his chest, pouting. “I just don’t think it’s fair to take away choices like that.”

Mark hums. “I get that,” he says softly, and is then distracted by a cute dog walking past that he coos at and asks the owner for permission to pat. Chenle smiles at him, and once the owner is tugging the dog away Mark stands with a sigh.

“I should probably go soon,” he says, staring up at passing clouds. “Homework…”

“Fair enough. Me too.” Chenle leans back similarly, and thinks about how odd it is to have spent so much time with a boy he hardly knows, let alone a client. Something about Mark makes him want to stay; maybe it’s the thread tied neatly around their wrists, or maybe it’s something stronger than that. “Did you think about letting me cut some of the threads? I can pick off a few before you go, if you want.”

“Oh.” Mark looks down at his chest, and it makes Chenle smile, knowing Mark can’t see them. There’s so many it must be a burden weighing him down. It attests to Mark’s strength of character that he’s still so light. “I’ll think about that too.”

“Okay.” Chenle smiles at him, offering out a hand to shake. “It was nice to see you again, Mark Lee.”

Mark laughs, as always. He takes Chenle’s hand.

“You too, Chenle Zhong.” He adjusts the backpack strap over his shoulder. “I’ll consider my options and we can meet up again next weekend?”

“Sounds good.” Chenle lets go, but his palm still burns. “Good luck with classes this week.”

“You too!” Mark says, and with a wave he’s jogging across the street to enter the train station. Chenle watches the thread between them stretch to accommodate, until he can no longer see the end of it looped around Mark’s warm, boney wrist.

“How was your meeting with that nice boy?” Chenle’s mother asks as he gets home from classes on Monday, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Fucking eight a.ms. “What was his name again?”

“Mark.”

“Mark,” she repeats. “Such a nice young man, don’t you think?”

“Uh… sure, he’s fine to work with.” Chenle squints at his mum as she moves around in the kitchen, alternating between cutting boards and the sink. Xihua is weaving in her glass enclosure on the marble island, and Sunny hops up to the edge of it to watch. “That curse is nasty, though.”

His mother hums in agreement, dicing up cabbage.

“So many threads,” she notes with a hard line to her mouth.

“Did you weave any?”

She shakes her head. “It seemed a waste of time. His problem was a problem of the present, not the future. He didn’t need to know what the threads would become, he just wanted them gone.”

Chenle nods, having figured as much.

“I’m not sure what to do,” he admits. His mother _is_ his supervisor when dealing in business practice, after all, and he’d go to her for advice even if she wasn’t. “I’ve discussed options with him, but the nature of the curse makes him… reluctant.”

“Hm, you’ll find something, I’m sure of it. The silk-song last night confirmed as much.”

Chenle winces at the mention, and his mother’s words grate against something inside him.

“You wove my tapestry without me there?” he asks, indignant. “Why?”

“Well there are plenty of threads around here to do it,” she waves her hands while stirring something on the stove. “Don’t be so reluctant, Lele, it’s family tradition.”

He stands off the kitchen stool.

“I’m going to my room,” he says curtly. “I have homework. Call me when dinner is ready.”

“Chenle--”

He’s up the stairs before his mother can follow, shutting the door behind him and breathing out. There’s an unread text from Renjun that he opens as he falls back onto his bed, phone above his head.

_movie this week?_

Chenle stares at it for a moment, types a few messages, then backspaces, then types them out again.

_sure_

_what day works for you?_

Chenle’s birth tapestry used to hang on his bedroom wall.

It had been spun from his first thread, as all birth tapestries are --many spell-weavers claim the first thread is the umbilical chord, but Chenle’s mother isn’t _that_ old-fashioned. As soon as the thread had sewn itself around her waist she’d woven it into a brilliant thing of red and purple and gold. _Colours for a king_ , she’d tell him _, an emperor_. Colours of greatness.

He used to stare at it every night, wondering at what stage his magic would kick in and all the nonsensical blurs and shapes would begin to make sense. It never came. Living while waiting for the future to come had never suited Chenle, so he stopped. He may not have ever looked at his tapestry and understood it, but he knew this; whatever powers had woven him into being, they hadn’t made him to sit still.

When Chenle turned sixteen, he tore the tapestry down.

Chenle turns his phone on as he leaves the cinema, and is greeted by a wall of notifications. None of them mean much of anything, though one does catch his eye.

_ok. i know who to tell about the curse. i think im ready._

_haha_

“That desperate to get out, huh?”

“What?” Chenle looks up, and shoves his phone into his pocket. “No?”

“You seem distracted today.” Renjun bumps their shoulders together. “Everything okay up there?”

“Yeah just uh-- message from a client mum handed over to me.” Chenle discards his popcorn bucket in a nearby wastebin. “What did you think of the movie?”

“It was okay, that het romance made me wanna die though.” Renjun grimaces. “Cringe as always.”

Chenle snorts. “Typical Hollywood.”

They exit in a comfortable silence. Cinemas are strictly no familiars allowed, so as soon as they’re outside Sunny flutters down out of a nearby tree to land on Chenle’s shoulder, antsy. Renjun watches with a small smile, and nudges Sunny’s beak with fondness.

“Sorry,” Chenle blurts, “I can send him home, if you want--”

“Don’t be silly.” Renjun gives a puzzled smile. “He missed you.”

And Chenle knows, not only because Sunny had whined through their bond for hours on end, but because of the gold thread around his foot that vibrates with excitement now that it’s close to Chenle again. Staring at it only makes Chenle focus on Renjun’s own golden thread, wrapped around his neck like a noose though the end is broken and frayed and bleached bone-white.

Renjun must catch Chenle looking, because he gives another sad smile.

“Weird.” Renjun touches his own forehead. “Do I have a big sticker that says ‘fragile’ stuck on me or something?”

Chenle grunts, which earns a typical Renjun cackle. It’s nice to hear his laugh again --not that it’s been more than five minutes since Chenle last heard it, but months of silence on Renjun’s end has left him in permanent deficiency.

“I told you I’m getting better,” Renjun reassures, staring out at the city across the riverbank they stroll along. “Slowly. You don’t have to act like you did before.”

“How did I act before?”

“Like I was broken,” Renjun tells him, his gaze distant. “Like I’d never be fixed.”

“I never thought that of you.”

“No, I guess not.” Renjun had always been in perfect balance, young but mature, quiet yet snarky, reserved yet considerate, a balance maintained with Zhu at his side. Now, he only falls into extremes. Mature, quiet, withdrawn. Chenle never has dealt well with change beyond his control. “But if you had, I wouldn’t blame you.”

Mark decides their next time and place, since he’s the one getting thrown under the bus. Chenle deems that fair, and hops on the three buses it takes to get to Mark’s place on the less magically populated side of town across the river. Even the air is stale with the lack of it, though threads still weave themselves through the street in every which direction. Chenle finds a comfort in it, in the face of the void of magic, checking his phone to make it to Mark’s address.

He raps on the door with his knuckles three times out of habit (it’s an important number to witches) then shoves his fists into his pocket while Sunny hops on his shoulder, antsy.

“Yo,” Mark greets as he swings it open. “Made it in one piece?”

“To the best of my ability,” Chenle returns, toeing off his shoes as he enters and glancing around. It’s a little messy, but cluttered and well-lived in, the halls decorated with framed photos of Mark and the rest of his family rather than tapestries and threads. It’s nice. Normal.

“My parents are at work until around six,” Mark explains, leading Chenle through to the living room beside the entrance hall. What a small house --at least compared to Chenle’s. “So let’s get this over with as quick as possible, okay? Kind of awkward for them to walk in on.”

Chenle snorts, though his retort is cut off by a third member of their impromptu meeting sitting at the short dining table.

“Get _what_ over and done with?” he asks, though the stranger seems amused rather than impatient. “You’re being weirdly vague, Markly.”

_Markly_. Chenle snorts, while Mark mumbles something indignant, and eyes the vibrant red string that stands taut between Mark and the stranger.

Ah.

The stranger appraises Chenle for a brief moment, like examining a threat, then stands and outstretches his hand.

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Yuta.” Chenle returns it; his grip is strong. Yuta turns to Mark with that same unreadable smile, fiddling with a dangling earring by his neck. “I didn’t know you knew any witches.”

“I don’t,” Mark says. “Not really. We met recently ‘cuz I hired him.”

“Hired him?” Yuta arches an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a little young to be practicing?”

“It’s under supervision,” Chenle says slowly. “You haven’t told him?”

Mark shakes his head. “I thought you might wanna see it first? Maybe knowing changes its affects.”

Chenle hums in appreciation, having not considered that himself.

“Smart,” he praises, and resists the urge to pinch Mark’s adorable cheeks. Not in front of Yuta, he reasons to himself, needing to remain professional in front of a third party and maybe also not show any weakness. Yuta seems calm and charming but is looking at Chenle like he’s chum in the water and it’s not a comfortable sensation --another affect of the curse? Or is this one just because it’s Mark?

Between them, the red string is pulled tight, and Chenle flicks it to hear a sharp _twang_ , a discordant, unnatural note that makes Sunny chirp in discomfort, fluttering to Mark’s shoulder away from the thread. It feels fibrous and strong, but something about it is distinctly unnatural, forged in the cursed miasma that clings to Mark’s skin.

When Chenle tugs on it --while Yuta asks what the _hell_ he’s doing and Mark shushes him-- Mark makes a small noise and rubs on his chest, though it doesn’t seem to do anything other than tighten the bundled mess the rest of the threads create. Strange.

Chenle turns to Yuta, then, ignoring his protests as he crowds closer, and sees the _normal_ amount of threads on him. It’s hard to confirm without picking his seams, but Chenle can hypothesize this curse doesn’t hurt Mark’s victims the way it hurts Mark.

“Okay,” Chenle straightens, and Sunny flies back over to him, huddled into the crook of his neck. “You can tell him.”

“Tell me _what_?” Yuta asks, indignant. “Why the hell is there a witch in here and what the fuck has he been doing--”

“Yuta, I’m cursed.”

Yuta cuts off, blinking.

“O… kay?”

The explanation goes about as well as one could hope for, Chenle supposes. Yuta takes in the entire truth that his feelings for Mark are only due to the manipulation of magic no thanks to a curse and the fact that, once upon a time, Mark had liked him, dead silent.

Mark admits it stuttering and with a flushed face, which is _so_ cute. It makes Chenle want to coo, but he recognises it isn’t his place to speak yet, watching their exchange sprawled out on a chair at the dining table, eyeing the thread. Knowledge of the curse does seem to make it fray and dull in doubt, but not undo.

“How do you know it’s just the curse?” Yuta finally asks, once Mark is finished, crossing his arms over his chest like it might protect all his threads. It doesn’t, of course, they just tumble out over his forearms in an array of colours Chenle doesn’t stare too hard at lest he contract a headache. “My feelings are _my_ feelings.”

“Would it matter if you did?” Mark replies, shoulders hunched. “The curse fucks everything up anyway.”

Yuta’s jaw locks, and then relaxes, as he similarly slumps.

“You don’t like me back, do you?”

“Sorry.” Mark looks away, as if appearing small might soften the false blow. Chenle’s seen the way this curse works, and knows Mark is lying, but it’s not his choice to reveal his truths. “Not anymore.”

Yuta exhales in dramatic exasperation.

“Ah well! Can’t be helped.” He turns to Chenle, finally acknowledging him after sitting in on one of the worst conversations of his life. “Well, now what?”

“Knowing the curse is affecting you _has_ weakened the thread, if only a little,” Chenle reveals. “Now I want to try breaking it.”

“What, and erase my feelings, just like that?”

“That’s not how it works,” Chenle defends. “Threads aren’t guarantees they’re… traces, suggestions, implications. You may stop feeling the way you do but you won’t forget about having felt it. If your feelings are as genuine as you think they are then breaking the thread shouldn’t affect anything. It should reform, if I can even break it.”

“I see…” Yuta stares at Mark with a strange, twisted longing, then says, “Well, since Mark doesn’t like me back anyway, go for it.” He rests his chin in his palm, expectant. “No point in a crush that’s just going to lead to cursed heartache. Unless you still want it, Markie.”

Mark seems to think it over for a moment, then says, “No.” He straightens up with his resolve, and his brave expression is just so _cute_. “Do it.”

Chenle nods, pulling the thread into the physical realm so they can both behold it with their own eyes. Yuta looks entertained, while Mark looks a little pale as Chenle brings it into his hands.

Some witches like hand signs and incantations and ingredients, but Chenle’s magic has always been straightforward. There’s no fancy footwork of flashing lights, just the swift pull of his hands as he tugs the thread apart and it snaps.

“Oh,” Yuta says softly, rubbing at his chest.

Mark looks to be in a similar pain, and Chenle takes the broken ends connected to both their chests and tugs once more. For Yuta, the thread unravels with ease until it’s unwound completely, free and dissipating into thin air. For Mark it won’t budge, stiff and stuck into the lump that surrounds him.

“I see…” Chenle mumbles, letting go and allowing the thread to fade. There’s nothing more to be done. “Well, safe to say you were definitely affected by the curse. Regular red threads shouldn’t be broken so easily like that.”

“Really?” Yuta asks.

Chenle nods. “Red threads are some of the strongest threads known to us. I’ve never tried to break one before, but I know it takes more force than what I put in. You’re completely free from it, which proves it’s more one-sided, but Mark…” he trails off, eyeing the threaded mess in Mark’s chest. “Well, yours got stuck.”

“Stuck?” Mark asks.

“Stuck,” Chenle confirms. “The curse has your threads all tangled up, it’s really weird. It’s like when a bunch of necklaces get stuck together and it’s hard to un-knot the chains, y’know?” Chenle frowns, running his fingers over a tangle of threads knotted in front of him. He’s not sure what to do.

“Then you just have to find the loose end, right?” Yuta says, pulling Chenle from his thoughts. “The outermost chain that can start to unravel.”

“Maybe…” Chenle looks down at Mark’s chest in thought.

“Okay,” Mark announces, standing. “I’ve had to anxiety-shit for the last hour. I’ll be back.”

Yuta laughs, teasing Mark for his dramatic digestion system until he’s disappeared down the hall and Chenle is left at the table with him, a little unsure of how to act. He doesn’t know anything about Yuta other than the fact that once upon a time Mark _liked_ him, and Chenle doesn’t know why that makes him as queasy as it does.

“So,” Yuta says conversationally. “I’m curious. What happens once the curse gets you?”

Chenle stares.

“What?”

“What happens once the curse gets you?” Yuta repeats. “Or what _if_ , if you’d prefer it hypothetically.”

“It won’t?” Chenle offers, tipping his head. “My magic repels unwanted threads, and I’d be aware of them even if they formed. Besides, Mark is just my…” He thinks about the nervous boy at his dining room table and the uni student he’d shared lunch with, the glistening thread still strung between their wrists. “...Client.”

Yuta snorts. “Yeah, and he’s _just_ my coworker.” Strange, Chenle wasn’t even aware Mark worked anywhere --just how much about him doesn’t he know? And why does he _want_ to know it? “Didn’t stop him.”

Chenle laughs, though it’s more from nervousness than anything else.

“I don’t think I’m his type,” he assures. He’s nothing like Yuta, that’s for sure, poster-boy beauty with an edge of age and maturity to him and easy charisma. No, Chenle is baby-faced with too many acne spots and is too lazy to shave everyday. Mark would want something better than a half-baked witch with obscure magic and no sense of direction.

“I think you underestimate him,” Yuta says, leaning back and scrutinising Chenle. “I mean… he’s Mark. His heart has too much room in it. That’s why the curse has worked so well, right?”

Chenle stills in realisation, supposing Yuta has a point, he opens his mouth to say as much, or at least add more denial that Mark would never like Chenle and even if he did, Chenle would simply break the thread, when Mark comes back out of the bathroom.

“Sorry,” he says, then winces. “Don’t go in there by the way. Anyone want anything? I was too busy trying not to shit myself to be a good host.”

Yuta laughs. “I think I’ll head home, this has been quite the day. I’ll leave you two to your--” he makes a vague hand gesture. “--witchy stuff. My shift starts in an hour.”

“Oh, okay. Bye man.” Mark slumps in disappointment, like they hadn’t had their feelings for each other severed prior. It makes Chenle smile in disbelief, as Mark tends to. At least the green thread tied around both their ankles is strong and well-made. Huh. “Good luck at work.”

Yuta nods. “It was nice meeting you, Chenle.”

“You too.”

The front door clicks shut behind him, Mark lets out a long breath.

“How’s it feel on your end?” Chenle asks.

“Terrible.” Mark rubs the back of his neck. “I nearly puked. Wanna play super smash bros?”

Chenle agrees, if only to give Mark the distraction. He kicks Mark’s ass, three times, and cheers when he whines --even if he’s laughing. He keeps rubbing at his chest though, clearing his throat.

“Heartburn?” Chenle asks.

“Something like that.”

It’s pitiful. Sunny senses Mark’s pain, too, because he hops from thigh to thigh, chirping to distract. It makes Mark laugh, and Chenle relax. _Good familiar_.

They switch out for Breath of the Wild, so Mark can aimlessly run around while Chenle picks at the lumps of threads on his chest. It’s hard to get the position right, for Chenle to be somewhere that doesn’t obscure Mark’s vision of the TV, but they settle for Chenle’s head in Mark’s lap so Mark can hold his arms up and Chenle can still pick at the threads closest to his heart.

It’s an absolute mess. Some of them are broken, most of them are fraying, some of them are regular threads Chenle _shouldn’t_ break, like threads of family or platonic love. Some of the red threads feel like miasma but have merged with other colours, like Mark loves someone and considers them his brother, too. It’s terrible, and Mark clears out tens of shrines while Chenle’s made next to no progress on his end.

He stares up at Mark’s five o’clock shadow, and the sharp cut of his jaw.

“This is awful,” Chenle groans, rolling off Mark’s lap to face plant on the couch. “I hate this stupid curse.”

“Tell me about it,” Mark grunts, and makes a cute face of concentration as he dodges out of his enemy’s way.

Chenle watches him for a few moments before saying, “I hate feeling like I’m not making any progress.” He sits up, leaning back on his heels. “I’m sorry.”

That makes Mark pause the game, turning to Chenle and blinking. “What for?”

“For not being able to fix this quicker.” Chenle frowns. “I thought I’d be better at it.”

“Dude, what? No, man, you’re still helping. That’s better than most.” Mark sets the controller down and places a hand on Chenle’s thigh. “I mean, at least Yuta will stop flirting with me. Maybe.”

“Maybe.” Chenle laughs.

“You’ll get it, bro, I’m sure of it. I believe in you.”

“Thanks…” Chenle flushes, still so unused to someone so genuine yet nonchalant. Mark picks up his controller again and continues playing as Chenle flops back into his lap. Mark accommodates with ease, completely unbothered by Chenle blinking up at him from on top of his thighs.

“Maybe I can help,” Mark offers, just as Chenle is ready to give up all over again. “Show them to me?”

Chenle obliges, materialising the threads so Mark can stare down at the tangled mess in his chest. He winces as he does, running his hands over them with gentleness.

“Ah,” he says, at as much of a dead end as Chenle.

“I know right,” Chenle mumbles, picking at a few. They don’t budge.

“What are some of these other colours?” Mark asks, hands following the path of a purple string.

“Depends on the person,” Chenle admits, “and depends on the relationship. Purple is usually family.” He nudges his chin at the thread currently in Mark’s hands. “Pink is for new relationships, green usually friends. Red is for romantic love, gold is… companionship. Not friendship, necessarily, but a different form.” Chenle reveals their own thread, a vibrant green still speckled with pink. “Sometimes threads can be multicoloured. Sometimes they change depending on one or both side’s moods. They’re all transient.”

“Huh.” Mark looks down at the thread around his wrist with wide eyes. “It’s not connected to the heart?”

“Not always,” Chenle explains. “Like I said, it all depends. Red threads are usually around the heart --at least in your case. Location can change just as colour. The human experience is subjective and so the threads are too.”

“So cool man,” Mark mumbles, which makes Chenle laugh. “Can I see more of yours?”

“I--” Chenle flusters, though Mark remains unaware of how intimate it is to ask a spellweaver of such a thing. It’s one thing to look at a client’s threads, and another to look at a _witch’s_. Still, he supposes Mark won’t know the connotations --or mean anything by it. “Sure.”

Chenle unravels the seams at his chest to let the threads tumble out, pulling them to the physical plane so Mark can examine them. Sunny, perched on the branch of a nearby houseplant, gives him a knowing look, but Chenle ignores him, allowing Mark to come closer as he touches the threads.

“Woah.” His hands are gentle, but each touch sends shivers down Chenle’s spine, more attuned to his own threads than Mark ever could be. “So this is what it’s meant to look like?”

“Yeah,” Chenle admits, voice tight and breathless. It's like letting a hand pierce his chest, intimate yet invasive. He lets more of the threads reveal themselves, tied around his torso and wrist and ankles and thighs, each a connection to someone in his life. He’s covered in the purple threads of family for his parents and brother and aunts, and Sunny’s golden thread is a bright thing wrapped around his head like a crown. There are green threads knotted around his ribs for Kun and Renjun, his closest friends, and pink to people he’s exchanged nothing more than pleasantries to. His seams depict a distinct lack of red in comparison to Mark.

“What’s black?” Mark asks, since his own seams have no such thing.

“Soured relationships,” Chenle answers. “Hatred, enemies, et cetera et cetera.”

“There are threads even for that?”

He shrugs. “It’s still a type of bond, in a way, even if we view it as an absence of one.” Mark’s fingers slide over the rings of purple looped around Chenle’s forearm, his touch brusque yet featherlight and still making his whole body shiver. “What’s white?”

It’s adjacent to Renjun’s thread in Chenle’s ribs, a thin white thread that leads nowhere.

“Death,” Chenle answers. “A bond to those you’ve lost.”

Mark lets the thread slip from his fingers, pulling back.

“It’s pretty amazing,” he says quietly. “Our bonds to each other and the world around us.” His finger runs over a brown thread, which connects Chenle to his favourite embroidery hoop, and another for his favourite basketball shoes. “Fate really weaves us into the universe, huh?”

“I wouldn’t call it fate.” Chenle pulls back a little just to give himself space, and the threads fade from Mark’s view. He focuses on stitching up his chest, rather than looking at Mark’s face. It’s too much attention, he’s too… _everything_. “The strings form because of our choices and our feelings, not the will of magic and the universe.”

“But they pull us together, right? They connect us?” Chenle risks a glance up, and sees Mark’s finger tracing the wrist where his thread to Chenle is looped. “Sounds like fate to me.”

Chenle opens his mouth to argue, or say something like, _of course you’re a romantic, Mark Lee_ , but the front door opens and somebody calls, “Mark we’re home~”

A short middle-aged woman stops in the entryway to the living room, where Mark and Chenle are sat on the couch, face to face.

“Oh,” she says, “hello there.”

“Hi,” Chenle replies. “I’m Chenle.”

She spots Sunny still happily perched on the houseplant, and her face widens in realisation.

“Ah,” she says. “You’re the spellweaver? How is the curse?”

“It’s going great, mom,” Mark answers for him. “Chenle’s amazing.”

Chenle inhales, and something forms in his chest, swelling as he looks to Mark, completely bepuzzled by this straightforward boy.

“Well that’s good, I’m glad to hear it.” She smiles warmly at them both. “Would you like to stay for tea?”

Mark’s mum makes wicked korean food, which is to be expected. They hand every dish to Chenle like he’s expected to know what it is and he takes it all with a smile and thanks, just happy to have a free, delicious meal.

Chenle charms Mark’s parents into telling embarrassing baby stories, and eventually finds out that he does, in fact, work part-time at the campus bookstore, is an avid basketball fan, as well as quite the flautist. Chenle goads on Mark’s mum just to tease him more about his sleeptalking habit, and ends the night with a full stomach and sore cheeks.

“Sorry she trapped you into this,” Mark says as he walks Chenle to the bus stop, having insisted he would. His slides slap against the pavement in steady, rubber thwacks as Sunny sits contentedly on his shoulder. “She’s really good at that. It’s a mom thing, I think.”

“I don’t mind. Your family’s really cool, it was nice to be included.”

Mark snorts. “Yeah, well our dishes don’t do themselves and food doesn’t float to the table, but we’re not too bad, I guess.”

Chenle rolls his eyes. “Do you really think witches live like that? I’m in a family coven of spellweavers. The best we can get are self-mending clothes.” He slings an arm over Mark’s shoulder and pinches his cheek. “Stupid human.”

Mark laughs, brushing Chenle’s hand off. “Okay, okay. Sorry for stereotyping.”

“Thank you.”

They continue walking like that, Mark completely unbothered by Chenle’s touchiness. He’s not used to it. Most people in his life take time to adjust to his noise and his clinginess and his blunt personality, but Mark doesn’t bat an eye. _His heart has too much room_ , Yuta had said, and Chenle is beginning to understand exactly how much --it’s why staring down at all those red threads hurts Chenle too.

They reach the bus stop and sit, Chenle still folded over Mark like a koala. The bus isn’t coming for another ten minutes, so Mark offers Chenle one of his airpods and plays a _LANY_ album. It’s modern yet sad, filled with longing. The sort of gentle, romantic music Chenle would expect from someone like Mark.

“We’ll get this curse someday,” Chenle declares with a sigh, resting his head on Mark’s shoulder.

Mark gives a noncommittal hum, staring out across the road. His hand taps along to the beat of the song on his knee.

“I know.” He isn’t lying; he never is. Mark is too earnest for deception. He looks at Chenle and smiles. “And even if you don’t… well, man, you still tried. That’s better than nothing.”

That feeling in Chenle’s chest swells larger, like a balloon in his chest that could pop at any moment. Sunny, still perched on Mark’s shoulder, lets out a sweet trill and ducks into the crook of his neck, mirroring Chenle’s deep affection.

So fucking embarrassing.

The bus rounds the corner, and Chenle stands just to put space between them, like the further from Mark he is the easier it might be to breathe.

“Same thing next weekend?”

Mark smiles up at him, soft and sleepy with his oversized hoodie and five o’clock shadow and messy hair.

(It isn’t any easier to breathe.)

“Sounds good man,” he promises. Chenle holds out the airpod and curls it into Mark’s fingers. “I still wanna one-v-one you and kick your ass at the basketball court by the river.”

Chenle snorts, stepping onto the bus. “In your dreams, Mark Lee!!!”

Mark waves through the window even as the bus alights, and Chenle watches the green thread between them remain taut and tight as it cuts into his wrist and cuts off circulation, leaving pins and needles at the tips of his fingers where, for just a moment, as Chenle had returned Mark’s airpod, he’d entertained the thought of holding his hand.

The thread between them thrums.

Chenle gets a B on his paper, which is better than his usual C. (Cs _do_ get degrees, however.) He chats to the lecturer after class just to go over some of his feedback points, more out of familial obligation than any sort of interest, and discusses potential ways of turning supervised licensee work into extra credit.

Most of it involves writing a paper, which Chenle would rather die than do, lamenting about the fact to Kun over hotpot.

“Don’t rule it out completely,” Kun tells him. “Extra credit work helped me out in my last year when I needed to boost my grades and get an apprenticeship.”

“Ugh, I’m not _not_ gonna do it I’m just--” Chenle’s face twists. “Reluctant.”

Kun laughs. “You just hate school.”

“You wouldn’t get it, you _love_ school, you--” are a warden, one of the most difficult witch proficiencies there are. Kun’s ambition towards magic is only outweighed by his talent and passion for it. It’s not that Chenle doesn’t love magic, or love _his_ magic, just that it had taken him a long time to come to terms with it and sometimes that baggage doesn’t feel like it’s done being unpacked. “--are a total nerd.”

Kun kicks him, sending the current lotus root Chenle was about to submerge onto the ground when he yelps. He pouts at it, giving Kun puppy dog eyes that makes him withdraw his foot and mumble something under his breath.

“School isn’t for everyone,” Kun says. “Look at Yukhei. He didn’t get his license, either.”

“Yeah but he--” Chenle senses it’s not an argument he’s ever going to win. “--It’s different. You know my magic is weird.”

“Weird,” Kun repeats with an eye-roll. “It’s just different, Chenle, not _weird_.”

If Kun were related to Chenle, he’d say it was different for a _reason_. Everything is always for a _reason_ , or so Chenle had been brought up to believe, but it had never made sense why. Was it a _reason_ that Chenle had spent his childhood in his room, isolated from the world, because living life in a spiderweb of so many colours had made him want to cry. Was it a reason that his grades sucked and his magic was strange and nearly useless, unable to let him live up to the legends of his own tapestry. Was it _reason_ that took away Zhu, or cursed Mark Lee, or--

But Kun isn’t related to Chenle; and what a warped blessing that is.

“Whatever,” Chenle mumbles, grabbing a piece of carrot out of the pot. He sighs melodramatically. “I’ll get through it.”

Kun smiles. “That’s the spirit.” He pats Chenle’s forearm. They eat in comfortable silence for a moment until Kun says, “Have you spoken to Renjun recently?”

The last time Chenle had spoken to Renjun had been on Monday, when he’d sent him a tiktok about frogs. Renjun had thumbs upped the message but said nothing else.

“We hung out last week,” Chenle answers. “Why?”

Kun frowns. “I dunno, he’s just gone quiet on me and Yukhei. I’m worried about him again.” He turns to the restaurant beside their table with a frown. “It’s nearly August, isn’t it? That’ll make eleven months.”

“Oh,” Chenle realises, following Kun’s gaze. “You’re right.” It’s overcast outside. Sunny bristles at the edge of the table.

_Rain soon_ , he says, after reading Chenle’s thoughts. _Big storm_.

“Has he been to any family events?”

Chenle shakes his head. “He stopped coming to silk-song ages ago. Alongside everything else.”

“Not surprising.” Kun frowns. “I just hate that he isolates himself like this. Do you have any time to see him, this weekend? He never says no to you.”

Chenle frowns. He has that group project on Saturday, and Mark the day after but-- maybe he can squeeze it in.

“I’ll try my best,” Chenle sighs. Sometimes he wishes he could go back to being a kid, when the threads around him had no broken ends and time wasn’t a precious commodity. Back then, tapestries used to make his toes curl and his stomach fill with butterflies, rather than dread.

Chenle’s first green thread started like this: ten years old and just at the cusp of learning to control his magic, to dull the sight of millions of threads criss-crossing his vision, filtering them out to see only the most important ones. His father was a Zhong, but his mother was a Huang, and one of her distant, distant relatives in the branch families had a son around Chenle’s age.

“You’ll like him,” she’d assured. “He’s a witch like you.”

“A boy witch?” Chenle had wrinkled his nose. “I thought I was the only one.”

“In your _father’s_ family,” she’d corrected. “Huang blood is stronger than that.”

He was taller than Chenle even back then, chubby cheeked with a hideous bowl cut that hid the way his ears had outgrown his head. He was soft-spoken, yet confident, which had been good for Chenle, whose exposure to the outside world consisted of ipod touch games and his bedroom TV.

“Hello,” he'd said. “I’m Renjun.”

Renjun was a spellweaver, as all Huangs were, but his eyes had still widened when Chenle had spoken of all the threads he could see. They’d left their forced, yet pleasant, playdate with a pink-green thread tied around their ribs where they’d been poking each other’s moments prior to see who was more ticklish.

Later, Renjun would summon a raven a year and a half before Chenle would attempt the same and bemoan over the fact that it wasn’t a spider, like all weavers should have.

“I like birds,” Chenle had reassured. “Birds are cool.”

Then, he’d show Chenle his birth tapestry, a thing of purple and red and gold and explain what the colours meant, how the threads bending left or right depict greatness and power and strength. Chenle would lie on the floor on his stomach feeding Zhu salt and vinegar chips every time Renjun wasn’t looking, and understand nothing but listen all the same. Renjun loved magic in a natural way where Chenle had to work for it; threads bent and whispered to Renjun and blinded Chenle. He’d proudly declare that his tapestry meant he was fated to be a powerful witch, and Chenle believed him.

How fickle fate can be, sometimes.

Mark’s thread around Chenle’s wrist won’t stop fucking _twitching_.

“Are you alright?” Renjun asks, giving an amused look. They’d agreed to get boba after lunch, Chenle just hadn’t thought the line would take this fucking long. “You seem… impatient.”

“What makes you say that?” Chenle asks, while Sunny flitters around the tiny hole-in-the-wall enough to get dirty looks from other customers.

“No reason,” Renjun deadpans, watching Chenle’s familiar bounce off the walls with impatience. Mark’s thread is _demanding_ his attention so much that Chenle can’t wait to tease Mark about how much he thinks about Chenle when he misses him. So cute. “Somewhere better to be?”

“What? No,” Chenle quickly denies. “I love hanging out with you, it’s just--” he inhales sharply. “--I may have double booked myself.”

Renjun snorts. “Classic.”

What? It’s not Chenle’s fault his stupid group project on spellsongs took up his entire Saturday because everyone is incompetent (including Chenle) and then he had to delay his brunch with Renjun to a lunch with Renjun because he needed to sleep in and Mark had asked to meet a little earlier because his flute lesson had been cancelled. He thought it’d be fine.

“What do you have after?”

“A work… thing…” Chenle mumbles, because he knows bringing up witch business with Renjun can get. Touchy.

Renjun rolls his eyes. “Okay so we can go there straight after this. I don’t mind.”

“Really?” Chenle is shocked, both by the absence of Renjun’s usual prickliness when it comes to magic and the presence of his neediness. Well, neediness by Renjun standards. Maybe Renjun hates being alone as much as Kun worries he does. "We're like, gonna play basketball."

"O...kay?" Renjun replies. "I like basketball?"

"I thought you were an art gay?"

"Says the guy who embroiders." Renjun pinches Chenle, who yelps. "I have some capacity in sport. It's quite graceful. Like a ballerina on the court."

"Are you a ballerina from the bench too when you sit down because you're lazy?"

Renjun pinches him again.

Chenle’s magic must be acting up, because he can see all the translucent threads of meeting stretching between him and the server (barista? Bobarista? What’s the proper term for people at a bubble tea store?) stretching when their fingers brush. He winces and massages his temple.

“You okay?” Renjun asks.

“Yeah just--” Chenle takes a loud sip of earl grey. “Headache.” Mark’s thread is still insistently tugging, as if Chenle had forgotten he’s meant to meet Mark fifteen minutes ago. He closes his eyes and inhales the way his mother had taught him, until the weaker threads fade from his vision. “Let’s go.”

Mark is dribbling alone like a miserable stood-up loser when Chenle places his fingers through the gaps in the chain-link fence and yells, “YO.”

“Nice of you to show up!” Mark yells back, watching as Chenle and Renjun walk down the steps towards the court.

“I bought a great gift in my deepest apologies your highness.” Chenle holds out the sealed taro cup in a plastic bag. “And also Renjun.”

“Hello,” Renjun greets quietly. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yo man you too.” Mark jerks a thumb at Renjun. “I didn’t think you fraternized with non-witches.”

Chenle flinches as if struck, expecting iciness from Renjun, but it never comes. He only laughs.

“What does that make you?” Renjun asks, nudging Mark with his elbow.

“A client? I dunno. A very cool exception?” Renjun laughs again, and it flusters Mark further. So cute. “Hey, it’s not like I know any other witches either!”

“Mm, that class divide can be very prominent,” Renjun agrees. “We’re cousins.”

“Very _distant_ cousins.”

“Fourth cousin once removed if you want to get technical,” Renjun continues. “My mum shares great great great grandparents with Chenle.”

“Dangggg.” Mark’s eyes are wide. “Small world, huh?”

Renjun snorts. “Yep.”

“I didn’t know anyone actually knew how that removed stuff works.” He bounces the ball once, just for good measure. “Teach me?”

Chenle hadn’t known what to expect introducing Renjun to Mark, but watching them get along while a mixture of jealousy and pride swirls around in his stomach hadn’t been it. Chenle can’t remember the last time Renjun had taken to anyone so well --even now, he talks to Chenle, at best, as his green threads with everyone else start to dull in colour. Watching the threads form between them with each pass of the ball and Renjun’s teasing jokes about Mark’s clumsiness makes him smile.

Luckily, no red ones.

Renjun gets tired out, as Chenle had predicted, and opts for the sidelines while Chenle and Mark do a versus match. Mark wins by a single three-pointer and when they flop onto the grass near Renjun Chenle _insists_ he let Mark win. (He hadn’t, not by choice, but when Mark had held his waist and spun Chenle around the ball had slipped out of his sweaty fingers and he’d yelled foul so loud his voice had cracked. Mark had said all was fair in love and war and Chenle was speechless because of course the literature major quotes poets at Chenle in the middle of an intense face-off, then scores a three-pointer and yells _lessssss geddit!_ )

“So are you at uni?” Mark asks Renjun, picking at grass by his thigh while trying to fill the silence. Sunny picks at all the little broken strands and makes a neat pile on the top of Mark’s knee. “Or…”

“I dropped out,” Renjun comments. “A while ago.” He shrugs. “I don’t know if I’ll go back.”

“Danggg, that’s fair, school can suck.”

Renjun looks at him for a moment so long that the thread between them vibrates with Mark’s nervousness, then says, “Well, I was considering art school, but…”

“What?” Chenle pulls his eyes away from the threads. “Since when.”

“For next year,” Renjun answers, a tilt to the corner of his mouth. “I’m still considering it.”

“Ohh that’s cool man, what would you study?”

“Fine art, I think.”

“Danggg. What were you studying before?”

Renjun smiles. “Spellweaving.”

Mark blinks, once, twice, and Chenle can see the gears turning.

“You’re not a witch, though?”

“Not anymore, no.” Renjun just looks amused, which Chenle is _so_ not used to when this topic comes up. “Got silenced from a car accident and lost my familiar.”

“Danggg man I’m super sorry…”

“It was a while ago now.” Renjun shrugs, though there’s a weight to his eyes that will never lessen, and a white string clawing at his throat. Sunny, finished piling grass on Mark’s knee, hops over and lets out a sad trill, as Renjun softens and pats the top of his head. “Shit happens.”

“Yeah that’s true,” Mark concedes, flopping back onto his back and staring up at passing clouds. Sunny lets out an indignant chirp as his grass pile slides off with the movement. “But what happens, happens man, y’know? Maybe it was for a good reason. Maybe you’ll be the best fine artist ever.”

Renjun laughs, and Chenle is left speechless, with that odd pressure rooted in his chest again.

“Maybe,” Renjun agrees, looking at Mark with a fond expression. Renjun makes excuses of needing to get home because he promised his mum he’d help with dinner, though Mark doesn’t let him go before asking for his number and letting the green thread between their fingers thicken. Chenle hugs Renjun, _tightly_ , then tells him to scram so he and Mark can get to work.

“Work,” Renjun mocks. “ _Sure_.”

Chenle frowns at him, arching an eyebrow, but Renjun just pulls his hood over his head and waves goodbye while untangling his headphones.

“He was super cool,” Mark comments. “We should hang out again.”

“Should I be jealous?” Chenle retorts, plopping himself on the ground next to Mark. “Are you going to replace me with my older yet inferior fourth cousin once removed?”

Mark snorts, dragging himself so that his head in is Chenle’s lap.

“Nope, you’re one of a kind.” He grins up at Chenle with his stupid patchy facial hair from an inability to shave and a bit of purple taro jelly stuck between his front teeth and Chenle thinks, _oh_.

“You’re such an adorable little sap,” Chenle tells him, pinching Mark’s cheeks in favour of paying attention to the way his heart is trying to start a marching band in his ribcage. “Sappy romance novelist Mark Lee.”

“Shut up, I don’t write romance novels,” Mark says, grabbing the basketball and pushing it up at Chenle while he cackles. “They’re character-focused narratives about the protagonist’s personal growth which happens to include enough self-acceptance to lead to romance--” Chenle laughs. “Man stop laughing at me!!”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry you’re just so cute.” Chenle pinches his cheeks again. “You would be like, the perfect son. You should just clone yourself when you have kids oh shit wait--” he laughs even harder. “The curse won’t let you!”

“Man shut up.” Mark pulls his hoodie up and rolls face down onto the grass. “I hate you,” he says, but it’s muffled against the dirt and sounds like _eye hayfe few_.

“Yeah yeah.” Chenle just pulls Mark back onto his lap, patting his hair a few times in forgiveness. It seems to help Mark relax. “How is our favourite little curse, by the way? Do you wanna play some more spider-man while I attempt some untangling?”

“Sure.”

They catch the bus to Chenle’s sharing airpods, again, and Mark puts on a playlist titled _doja cat to cope_ while justifying that there’s a reason why the popular songs are almost always the best ones. Chenle just sits and looks up at him with a smile while Mark stands and holds onto the rail against the peak crowd, while Sunny nestles into his lap and thinks, _happy_.

Mark swings around virtual New York while Chenle makes little to no progress on his mess of threads. He manages to break a few, but it only leaves loose ends tied tight around his heart. It’s hopeless. Chenle doesn’t know what to do in a situation like this, and his late-night researching hasn’t come up with anything better. All he can do is pick at the tangled ball and hope something eventually budges.

Defeated, he gives up and just stays in Mark’s lap while backseat gaming and yelling directions enough for Mark to yell back because he keeps forgetting to dodge and breaks his combos in the process. They fall back on the bed wrestling for the controller and Chenle is straddling Mark’s hips when his bedroom door opens.

“Oh,” his mum says. “Hello.”

Mark, frozen stock-still like a deer in headlights, says, “Hi Mrs. Zhong…”

“Mark, was it?” She eyes the playstation controller with a smile. “Hard at work, Lele?”

“Uh.” Chenle looks down at his thighs around Mark’s hips, and his hands on his stomach, and their incredibly compromised position. “Yep.” His voice cracks.

“Mhmm.” His mother only smiles, and when Xihua crawls up over her shoulder to look at Mark, Chenle _feels_ him shiver. “Will you be staying for dinner?”

“Oh, that’s okay I don’t want to impose,” Mark insists, his voice weak and timid.

“Nonsense,” Chenle’s mother argues. “I insist.”

And Mark, ever the good boy with a need to please, only smiles in defeat and nods.

“You’re an idiot,” Chenle tells him as his bedroom door clicks shut. “She’s going to eat you alive.”

“I know.” Mark squeezes his eyes shut. “I hate spiders.”

Dinner is a little more rigid and formal than it may be at the Lee house, but at least their food makes it to their table by Chenle’s aunts carrying it, rather than impossible magic Mark might have envisioned. It’s still filled with laughter and jokes and Chenle’s mother taking every possible moment to reminisce about young, isolated naive Chenle who was spoiled rotten to humiliate him, bright red at the dinner table and repeatedly whining, _mum_.

Dessert is finished just as Mark is enthusiastically talking about his love of Keats like the basic boy he is and Chenle’s mother clasps her hands together and says, “How about a tapestry, Mark?”

His eyes go wide, and he blinks from Chenle to his mum.

“For me?” He points at his chin. “Oh, that’s okay, I don’t wanna impose--”

“Please we insist,” one of Chenle’s aunts pipes up, and her tarantula familiar puts its front two legs up to emphasize. Mark pales. "Very few new threads to spin around here."

"Or cards to read," another adds.

"Or bones to toss!"

Mark looks to Chenle for help, but all he can do is shrug and give him a look that says, _told you so._

Sunny settles on Chenle's shoulder for front row seats as plates are cleared and Mark is forced to give one hand out for palm reading while the other holds old turtle bones over a flame, waiting for it to crack. Meanwhile, Chenle's mother has bundled the mess of threads in Mark's chest, pulling them through her silk loom.

"Hmm the threads of your palm are strong," his aunt comments. "A long, fulfilling life, filled with deep, committed love." She traces the fork of the love line where it ends near Mark's index finger, depicting capability and emotional maturity.

"Hmm, the star," his aunt reading cards comments. "Despite what life throws at you, you keep your beliefs, your faith."

Mark's eyebrows furrow together in confusion, but he's cut off by the sharp crack of bone.

"Hm," his other aunt hums, tracing the threaded shape crack splitting the oracle bone beneath the neat Chinese character carved into it that reads, _curse_. "What ails you will be undone with time, so long as you hold your faith."

"Hey that matches the other one!" Mark excitedly tells Chenle, like a puppy. It's cute, but also makes Chenle huff.

"Yeah yeah." Chenle crosses his arms over his chest. "Spoiler alert…"

"Done!" his mother declares, pulling the tapestry off her loom and pinning it to the living room wall while his aunts crowd around it to devour it.

Mark elbows him, whispering, "Yo, man, what does it mean?"

Chenle's family whispers in conspiracies, but he cranes over them to make out… a whole bunch of blobs on red silk.

"No fucking clue," Chenle answers. "Maybe uh…" It's like trying to make animals out of clouds. "Red for… love?"

Mark laughs. "Not your forte, huh?"

"Nope." Chenle turns his nose up, and Sunny points his beak similarly. "I prefer the threads that already exist, not the ones that _will_. They're much more interesting."

Mark laughs again.

"I think they're all cool," he says. "Magic is pretty awesome."

"It has its flaws, though."

"Yeah well, so does everything. We live in a society."

"Thank you, oh wise pretentious literature student…"

Mark bumps their shoulders together while Chenle cackles.

Chenle's mother gestures for Mark to sit as she explains the tapestry to him, far more thorough than she would a client. Chenle cringes; that means she _likes_ him. She tells him the red is a powerful colour, of luck and love and wealth, and the green between symbolises new life and new beginnings, a long life of many deep connections.

"And here," she continues, pointing to a splotch of blue in the corner that looks like a wonky star to Chenle if he tilts his head and squints. "A bird heading south, for freedom within a long journey ahead, but home awaits you on the other side."

Mark is wide-eyed and completely buying it, adorably gullible, but Chenle only rolls his eyes behind his mother's back. She may as well say _you are a broke college student, but you will one day be something else_. Talk about vague.

There's more in his tapestry, creativity and success, growth and change, knowledge. _Your writing will change the world_ , his mother tells Mark, _one heart at a time._

It reminds Chenle of being five and spread out on his own tapestry, chubby fingers trying to trace out purple bird wings stretching into a gold sky, and then, Renjun explaining red clouds on his own tapestry, and his scowling face in a hospital bed attempting to hide teary eyes, holding up a cut thread and spitting _, weave this for me._

Chenle's breath quickens.

"Dude, you alright?" Mark waves a hand in front of Chenle's eyes. "You look…"

"I'm fine," Chenle interjects. "Just zoned out. Having fun?"

"Yeah, but I think I've had enough of a wine-drunk spellweaver coven for today." He smiles, tilting his head and nudging Chenle's knuckles with his own. Chenle’s mother drags her seam-ripper through the tapestry, and the fabric dissipates, taking the uncertain future with it. "Walk me to the bus stop?"

It takes a bit to get Mark out of the house, mostly Chenle's loud protests to set him free and Mark promising to come back since guest's threads are so much fun to spin --his aunt's words, not Mark's. As he's leaving, Chenle's mother eyes the threads around Mark's heart and smiles at Chenle, then Mark is pulling him through the front door with a hand around his threaded wrist, laughing.

"Okay, witch families are fucking crazy."

Chenle joins in.

"Don't stereotype," he chastises. "It's just mine."

Mark laughs harder.

He offers out an airpod for the walk, putting a playlist of soft love songs on shuffle. Chenle likes them all; likes everything Mark likes too.

Likes Mark.

"How did it all feel?" Chenle asks, just to talk to Mark a little more. "Tacky, right? Spellweaving is so vague."

Mark hums, blinking up at a few speckled stars in the city sky.

"A little," Mark concedes. "But it was cool, I dunno. It's… comforting, knowing the future is a little more certain."

"Not always," Chenle warns. "Spellweavers can be wrong. The future changes as much as the threads."

"Okay yeah _sure_ man but y'know…" Mark rubs the back of his neck. "I dunno. I guess it's human to find a little comfort in the idea that even bad things happen for important reasons, witch or not."

"I find it scary," Chenle admits, and curls his fingers into the hem of Mark's soft hoodie. "I want the choice to prevent them, not…" His other hand curls over his rip. "Not just accept them in defeat."

"Acceptance isn't always the same thing as defeat, man," Mark reassures, slinging an arm over Chenle's shoulders. He smells like mint aftershave and fabric softener and the pungent tang of wine. "Either way, you just said nothing is certain. Does it matter?"

_It does_ , Chenle thinks, when everyone around you thinks it matters, when _they_ believe the golden threads that make you royalty and--

"Earth to Chenle?" Mark waves a hand over Chenle's eyes again. "Lots of zoning out today, huh?"

"What? Sorry." Chenle blinks back into focus, watching the street ahead rather than the way Mark looks at him. "I guess I'm tired." He quickly changes topics. "Which was your favourite future, then?"

"Hmmm... the tapestry was pretty awesome, though I'd never used oracle bones before. That was cool too." He reaches into his hoodie pocket. "Over all, I think my favourite spellweaving method is still this."

He pulls out a piece of cream fabric, folded into a neat thread. The ward Chenle had embroidered for him weeks ago.

"You kept it?" Chenle asks, surprised and touched both. His fingers brush over the threads as he takes it from Mark's fingers. The magic is drained, it's nothing but choppy threads on scrap fabric. "Have you been carrying it all this time?"

"Yeah man, you told me to, didn't you?" Mark rubs the back of his neck. "I can still keep it, right?"

"All the magic is gone," Chenle mumbles, tracing out the threads that have loosened over time. "There's no point."

"Yeah but you made it for me, and it's cool," Mark points. "That's enough for me."

Chenle looks at him in amazement, some horrid mix of confused and touched and awe-struck that spins around him like a spool of thread in a sewing machine, pulled by something beyond his control and getting stuck _._

"Plus, no one's fallen in love with me since you gave me that, so I think it works!" Mark tells him. Chenle is speechless. "Chenle?" Another hand wave. "Earth to Chenle?"

But Chenle is too distracted to respond, by the feeling in his chest that's finally started to make sense and the thin, red shimmer appearing in between his hands.

"Oh," he says, in realisation. "Uh-- right." He pushes the piece of fabric back into Mark's chest, and panics when something attaches to his fingers with it.

A single, red thread.

Fuck.

"Chenle…?"

"Here's the bus!" Chenle squeaks, scrambling back and watching the red thread between them extend to accommodate the distance. Sunny flutters to his shoulder in a frenzy, as Chenle's panic leaks through the bond. "Bye Mark! Talk soon"

He pushes Mark up the bus steps and is grateful that his protests are cut short by the door slamming closed behind him.

The red thread races to follow him, pulling Chenle's heart with it.

_Fuck._

Creative cloaking spells and Chenle sprinting to his room with a rushed excuse of being tired is the only thing that keeps his red thread hidden as he takes two stairs up at a time, slamming his bedroom door shut and tossing his threads out the window, preventing them from trailing through the house.

"This is a _nightmare_ ," he bemoans to Sunny, who has started anxiously destroying his nest in response to Chenle's mood. "What the fuck do I do?"

Sunny doesn't respond, still picking at his nest until it's gone. It only makes Chenle feel _worse_ , knowing how long Sunny had spent on that. He throws himself onto his bed with an arm over his eyes, groaning.

His bed still smells a little like Mark, which isn't any help at all. Rolling onto his stomach, Chenle's curiosity gets the best of him, and he sits up to look down at his chest.

He's never had a red thread before. He's had mauve threads --the bruised red threads of a one-sided love. Remembers meeting Kun through a mentorship program and his mother saying _it's okay to like boys, Lele_ and Chenle, who had left the house in his life enough times to count on one hand, had said, _um, duh, why wouldn't it be?_

(Later of course, the stars would fade from his eyes and he'd realise Kun was a complete dork who viewed Chenle as a brother, and the mauve would turn purple and green as Chenle realised he was okay with that.)

He's been on the receiving end, too. He'd be a little too friendly with classmates at uni and they'd tie themselves around his pinkies and make it hard to take notes in class. He'd considered their feelings, of course, stared at their threads and wondered what it'd be like to pursue, but being with someone just because you knew they liked you was selfish, and Chenle may have liked the attention, but he didn't have the heart for that.

It not like it was his intention to come off as a flirt; a lifetime of isolation has made Chenle overcompensate. He's always too talkative, too forward, too loud, traits that people either see as brazen interest or just plain _annoying._

But Mark doesn't; Mark likes it. Likes _him_.

And Chenle likes Mark too.

The thought sends his face into flames, shoving it into a pillow to muffle his next scream. He's being stupid --even if Mark _does_ like him, Chenle's only being affected by the curse, and that's not fair to Mark.

"I should break it," Chenle says to Sunny, holding the thread between his fingers. It's thinner than a proper woven red thread, a single strand on its own that only hints at the possibility of reciprocated feelings. It would be easy to break, since it's forged from the curse.

But then Chenle feels it tug his heart, and knows Mark is thinking about him, and something about that makes his stomach erupt with butterflies and his toes curl. Mark _likes_ him.

And Chenle is too selfish to break the thread.

Using his magic to hide the red thread in his own home leaves Chenle with a sordid amount of control over the threads he sees. It reminds him of being six and living in a spiderweb, tripping over translucent strings of superficial connections to objects and places by everyone in his family, terrified. It's overwhelming, though an efficient motivator to force Chenle out of the house, where he can leave the red thread be and control the rest of his magic a little better.

It's tugging again, as Mark thinks about Chenle, making him grin to himself, pleased, before he remembers better and wipes it off his face. It's so frail and delicate, Chenle thinks, cradling it to his chest like it might snap at any moment, the ephemeral effect of newly bloomed feelings. He feels it pulse with his heartbeat, and wonders if Mark knows he's thinking about him too.

Humiliated by himself, Chenle groans and slams his forehead against the bus stop stand.

His thread won't stop tugging, and Chenle is about to text Mark to stop thinking about him when his phone buzzes in his back pocket anyway.

_hey man just wanted u 2 kno im havin a birthday thing next weekend and it'd be cool if u came haha_

So that's why Mark's thinking about him, god. Why does that make Chenle so happy?

_WHAT_

_IT'S UR BIRTHDAY???_

_next weekend yeah haha_

_ill add you to the facebook event thing haha_

Oh god, it's Mark's birthday soon, and he wants Chenle there, and now he needs a gift and an ability to pull his shit together because he's seriously considering if kissing Mark would be a good gift.

"This sucks," Chenle tells Sunny as he alights and makes his way to Kun's apartment. "Feelings really are a curse."

Sunny only gives a short chirp in agreement, and flies up to Kun's balcony before Chenle can even hit the buzzer.

"What's up!?" Yukhei greets as he opens the door, assaulting Chenle with the scent of greenery and humidity. The plants behind the doorway lean forward curiously to see who's arrived, as the sunflowers woven in Yukhei's hair turn towards Chenle in greeting. "Woah, you look like you've seen a ghost, man."

The red thread attached to Yukhei's heart is thick and sturdy, like a rope leading back into the kitchen where Chenle imagines Kun is slaving away. He eyes their adorable apartment with plants and a nice balcony and their dog and cat familiars napping in the corner and the red thread between them, and thinks, _I want this with Mark._

"Tell me about it," Chenle grunts.

Chenle spends more time staring at Mark's facebook event titled _markie's big bday bash_ than he does doing anything productive. It's just drinks at his house, and Chenle is pouring over the guest list for the umpteenth time wondering who all these people in Mark's life are and why he cares so much when he sees Renjun's profile.

_u knew abt mark's birthday?!?!?_

_I always assumed he had one, yes._

_shut up u kno what I meant_

"Since when were you and Mark close?” is the first thing Chenle asks when Renjun picks up after a single ring.

“Since you introduced us?” Renjun’s tone is smug. “Why? Jealous?”

“No, just--” Surprised, maybe, that Renjun is making new friends, let alone with Mark. Then again, if anybody is good at worming their way into someone’s heart, it’s Mark. Chenle would know. “--Are you buying him a gift?”

“Uh... I don’t know if we’re _that_ close. I’m not sure what I’d get him.”

“Right?” Chenle bemoans. “This is awful. Am _I_ that close to him? I feel like I should get him something. Help.”

“Calm down lover boy,” Renjun’s teasing sends Chenle’s face into flames because there’s _no_ way he can know about the thread-- “We can brainstorm if you’re so desperate to impress him. What comes to mind?”

“Ummm,” Chenle panics, because all his brain can think is _OHMYGODILIKEMARKSOMUCHINEEDTOMAKETHISTHEBESTGIFTEVER_. “A… basketball?”

“O… kay that’s nice and sporty and all but maybe something a little more personal."

“A… _signed_ basketball.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“I’m _trying_ ,” Chenle groans. “Mark causes me enough stress as is!”

“Because of the curse?”

Chenle looks down at the red thread in his chest.

“Yeah you could say that.”

“Maybe you just need to stop thinking so hard,” Renjun consoles. “You know him better than I do. Give him something that holds meaning for both of you, beyond common superficial interests.”

“Basketball isn’t a superficial interest it’s an artform and a lifestyle--”

Renjun yawns. Loudly.

“Oh dear, suddenly something came up and I have to go.”

“I hate art gays!” Chenle shouts into the receiver just as the call ends. Renjun’s aversion to sport should be considered a crime, Chenle doesn’t know why he puts up with him, especially when he gives such useless advice.

“Something with meaning,” Chenle mumbles to Sunny, watching him begin to weave a new nest out of spare bits of embroidery thread flung about Chenle’s room. It gives him an idea --a tedious one, but an idea all the same.

“Why are you so nervous?” Renjun asks, as they walk up Mark’s street to his house. “You love… socialising.”

Renjun says _socialising_ like it’s a slur.

“I’m not nervous,” Chenle defends, as Sunny flies in anxious circles around his head. “Why do you always think I am?”

Renjun stares up at Sunny, then rolls his eyes.

“Just because Zhu’s gone doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how familiars act,” he clips. “It’s a bit of a dead giveaway, don’t you think?”

Chenle sighs, calling Sunny to sit on his shoulder to calm down, wiping his sweaty palms on the wrapping paper of Mark’s gift and then immediately regretting it.

“This is stupid,” Chenle mumbles. “I don’t know why I’m nervous either!”

“I didn’t even know you were capable of feeling it as an emotion,” Renjun admits. “You just… act louder and more annoying anyway, it doesn’t make a difference.”

“One day I’m going to fight you in a McDonald’s parking lot and win,” Chenle says. “Then you will realise you have no right to be mean to me.”

Renjun rolls his eyes, then shoves Chenle’s head as he spews out more indignant protests.

“You’re such a baby,” he says. “Stop freaking out over your crush and be _normal_.”

“I do not-- I do not have a crush!” Chenle splutters. “I would not crush on Mark because he is my client even if he has also become a good friend and he has a curse that involves people falling in love with him and if I fell for that it would be _soooo_ unprofessional and--”

“Oh my god,” Renjun cuts him off. “You actually have a fucking crush.”

“I just explained why I don’t!”

“Yeah but you were being louder and more annoying, which means you’re hiding the fact that you’re nervous and _lying_.” Renjun’s face lights up with pure sadistic delight. “You have a big gay crush on Mark Lee, _ha_. That’s so gay.”

“Shut up shut up shut up.” Chenle holds his arms over his head and crouches on the sidewalk. “I do not!!”

“Do too you big gay baby,” Renjun continues teasing. “Gay little Chenle!”

“Stop it. My life is miserable.” Chenle pouts, giving Renjun wobbly eyes in defeat as Sunny just sits on Renjun’s shoulder. Traitor. Sighing, Chenle picks up the red thread and materialises it so Renjun can see.

“Oh wow.” Renjun crouches to get a better look, watching it trail down the street to Mark’s house. “You got it _bad_ bad.”

“I really do,” Chenle bemoans, hiding his face between his hands.

“I mean, I knew you liked him a lot, but I didn’t think it was _this_ much.” His finger trails over the thread without touching it, tracing its path in the air. “Are you going to confess? Like in shoujo anime, take him behind the classroom with your handmade gift and--”

“Shut _up_ ,” Chenle pushes Renjun who only laughs as it knocks him off balance, preventing himself from tipping over by leaning on his palm. “I can’t tell him.”

“Why not?”

“Because of the curse?” Chenle offers. “My feelings aren’t genuine, remember?”

“How do you know?” Renjun counters, and Chenle gives him a quizzical look. “I mean, sure, red threads form because of the curse, but they form outside of it too. Your magic should naturally repel it. How do you know yours isn’t the real deal?”

“Even if it was…” Chenle mumbles, running his finger under the thread and smiling softly when it twitches as Mark thinks about him. “Mark wouldn’t believe me. He’s been too hurt before and I don’t--” He swallows around the thick lump in his throat. “--I don’t want to hurt him too.”

How unlovable does Mark Lee believe he is? How many boys have offered their threaded hearts up to him only for him to realise that their love hadn’t been genuine? How long had it taken for him to realise that the curse even existed and how had it fractured his poor, vulnerable heart? Even if Chenle’s feelings _are_ genuine, why would Mark believe him? What if he finds some way to fuck their relationship up and hurts him anyway, regardless of the curse?

“Man I was right, you really are hopeless,” Renjun sighs, standing up and dusting his palms on his jeans. “But if you want to be stupid, be stupid. I’m not going to fix your problems for you.” He holds a hand out; Chenle takes it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“ _Nope_ , this is your problem.” Renjun pokes the centre of Chenle’s chest, right above the red thread. “C’mon, we’re going to be late.”

It’s not a big thing by any means, at some position between a small gathering and a house party. Mark’s living room is packed with unfamiliar faces though, all holding drinks and all of them human. Chenle is the only witch in the building, and feels Sunny burrow into the back of his hoodie to hide because of it.

“Hey!” Mark calls as he spots them, and his face lights up into a smile and Chenle thinks, _cute_ , before being distracted by something more shocking. The tens of red threads in Mark’s chest that have gone taut --his one with Chenle included. “You guys made it!”

“How many people are you in love with?” Chenle blurts, and Renjun steps on his toe. “Ow!”

“Thanks for inviting us,” Renjun replies, holding up a six-pack he brought because he’s a mature adult that _likes_ alcohol. “I’m going to find some ice. You’re on your own.”

He pats Chenle on the shoulder, and disappears into the kitchen, leaving Chenle with his mouth gaping like a fish.

“Is that for me?” Mark asks, gesturing to the crudely wrapped lump in Chenle’s hands, tied with red ribbon.

“Uh…” Chenle doesn’t want him to unwrap it here in front of everybody, but--

“Mark!!” a voice calls, stepping forward and slinging an arm over Mark’s shoulders. “Happy birthday.” The _assailant_ leaves a big wet kiss on Mark’s cheek as Chenle stares at the red thread drawn between them, then turns to him and says, “who’s this?”

“Oh, uh-- Jungwoo this is Chenle, Chenle, Jungwoo.”

“A witch?” Jungwoo tilts his head, spotting Sunny curiously poking out of the back of his hood. “Not everyday you guys cross the river, eh?”

Chenle laughs nervously. “I guess so!” The last thing he needs to do at a party is get his witch privilege checked --he’s Gen Z, okay, he _knows_. He’s aware! Maybe he wants one of those beers after all, even if they taste like shit.

“How did you two meet, exactly?”

“It’s a long story man,” Mark covers, laughing. He looks at Chenle. “Do you want a drink?”

Chenle will take any excuse to get away from prying eyes and the thick, red thread connecting Jungwoo to Mark.

“Yes please.”

Mark leads Chenle to the kitchen with a hand around his threaded wrist, the green silk between them still strong. He watches that red string with Jungwoo extend as Jungwoo moves on to a different group of people and Chenle thinks, _I could break it. Nobody would ever know_.

_Chenle_ , comes Sunny’s stern voice as he pecks at Chenle’s ear, which he yelps and then rubs, hissing at him.

Mark gives him an amused look, then says, “You only like baiju, right? I don’t have any of that but we have like… juice?”

“Juice is fine,” Chenle mumbles, then tries not to combust because Mark remembered something he said offhandedly weeks ago and god Chenle likes him so fucking much, what the _fuck_. He’s so fucking cute. The thought just makes Chenle stare at all the red threads tangled in Mark’s chest and he blurts, “So do you crush on all of your friends?”

Mark goes wide-eyed and speechless, cheeks reddening as he rubs the back of his neck.

“Not _all_ of them,” he mutters, avoiding eye-contact. “Is it that obvious?”

“I-- sorry. I’m just…” Chenle looks down at the long trails of thread. “It’s a lot.”

Mark scratches his cheek, still embarrassed.

“It’s not like it was ever real,” he mumbles. “Even little feelings is enough to activate the curse, y’know? Fleeting thoughts about someone being cute and boom.”

_Is that all I am to you too?_ Chenle wants to ask. _A little feeling?_

“I can cut some, if you want,” he offers instead. _Please say yes please say yes please say yes._

“Man c’mon it’s a party,” Mark counters, bumping Chenle’s shoulder. “Relax! Don’t think about work.”

“I--” Chenle frowns. “--Doesn’t it hurt? Isn’t it annoying?”

Mark shrugs. “Dude it’s whatever, I don’t wanna worry about it tonight. And neither should you.” Impossible, because Chenle can’t phase the red threads out of his vision no matter how hard he tries. Mark fills a plastic cup with pineapple juice and holds it out. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Chenle’s fingers curl around it, their hands brushing and extending translucent threads between them. God fucking damn it-- Chenle blinks, attempting to focus. His magic is going too haywire to control.

“Yo happy birthday man!” someone shouts, another tall boy with a red thread in his chest. He scoops Mark away into a conversation about uni Chenle doesn’t get and he excuses himself to slip away, drinking the entire juice in one go and leaving the empty cup on a table in the hallway. Renjun, where’s Renjun, Chenle needs some familiarity. Badly.

“Are you a witch?” a voice asks, making Chenle spin as a curious girl with a giant bow wrapped around her ponytail examines Sunny in his hoodie. “How cute.”

“Uh, yeah.” Chenle cups Sunny in his hands to hold him out. “His name’s Sunny.”

“Awww,” she coos, delighted when Sunny hops onto her fingers and preens, proud little piece of shit that he is.

Her name’s Yizhuo, and she knows Mark through flute lessons, which Chenle takes a mental note to tease him about later. Chenle had thought he’d feel ostracized, but Yizhuo and her friends just want to coo over Sunny and listen intently to his strange brand of spellweaving, a poignant reminder of the divide between witches and humans, since magic is a privilege they’re not privy to. It helps him to relax, settling into comfortable socialising without anyone he knows around. He watches the threads between the group form and shift and change and finds comfort in it. It’s nice, just for a moment, to remember that a red thread isn’t the end of the world, and life goes on. The bubble Chenle lives in isn’t invincible.

So maybe Mark’s friends are as cool as Mark, even the male ones with red threads, and all the realisation does is make Chenle like him more, somehow, which is awful. He’s not used to having these feelings, let alone being aware of what they are, and even if they’re not ruining his life as much as his gay melodrama would like to pretend they are they’re still _trying_ to.

Someone with a red thread brings out a cake and Chenle tamps down his jealousy when Mark blows out the candles and closes his eyes to make a wish. He cuts it, and the knife comes out dirty which means he has to kiss the closest boy, so he turns to Chenle and kisses him on the cheek and Chenle goes so still that Sunny falls off his shoulder and rolls back into his hood in shock.

He’s still frozen in the exact same position after everyone has moved away to eat cake and drink more when Renjun holds out a paper plate and says, “You could try to be less obvious.”

“Shut up.” Chenle blinks back into motion and snatches the plate of cake. It’s strawberry and very delicious and Chenle’s cheeks are still burning. “Where have you been all night?”

“Meeting people? It’s a party.”

“I didn’t know you ~ _socialised~_.” Chenle can’t quite get the slur-like quality Renjun gets. Renjun rolls his eyes.

“I’m working on it,” he mumbles, poking at his own cake slice with a plastic fork. “I… it’s easier, with humans, I think. They don’t look at me like I’m broken.”

“You’re not broken,” Chenle tells him, even with his fraying thread all the others are still holding strong. “One broken seam isn’t enough to unmake something.”

“I know that.” Renjun smiles softly. “Now, at least.” Translucent threads shimmer around Renjun as they begin to solidify with new connections made at the not-quite-party, and it makes Chenle smile, some mix of proud and comforted and a little bit smug because he’s the one that got Renjun here, on a technicality.

“Yo, Renjun!” A boy with sun-kissed skin and gold-brown hair calls. “We’re setting up beer pong so I can teach you.”

Renjun sighs, placing down his plate.

“That’s my cue.”

“Does that count as a _sport?_ ” Chenle gasps. “I think that counts as a sport!”

“It’s not a sport but it is very straight,” Renjun says in defeat, then pinches Chenle’s ear. “Stop being stupid and give Mark your gift.”

“Wha--” Chenle blinks at Renjun’s evil little smile as he walks away to hang out with his _new_ friends, and sees Mark edging his way through the crowd towards him with a familiar poorly wrapped lump in his hands. He keeps being stopped by people with red threads and people without them and all it does is make Chenle feel fond and a little bit full because everybody loves Mark, and he deserves it.

“Hey,” Mark greets, breathless, as he makes it to Chenle, the red string between them vibrating. “Having fun? Sorry I’ve been busy hosting I hope you haven’t felt alone or anything--”

“Mark, I’m fine,” Chenle reassures, placing a hand on his arm. God even when he’s worried it’s cute, and Chenle can’t hold back a smile. “I am very good at not shutting up and meeting new people. Your friends are also very nice.”

“Phew, that’s good, I’m glad.” He rubs the back of his neck for a moment, then holds up the lumpy gift. “I found this on the stairs it… it _is_ for me, right?”

“No it’s for Jungwoo,” Chenle deadpans. Mark rolls his eyes and it makes Chenle laugh. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it? Or did I get confused. Maybe I bought that for Sunny.”

“Yeah yeah.” Mark wraps a hand around Chenle’s wrist. “Let’s go outside? It’s quieter.”

“Um. Okay.” Chenle gulps, and lets Mark pull him out to the small backyard where a few people sit in a circle, smoking. Mark ignores them, though, leading Chenle to a small garden chaise in the dark corner and tugging him down into sitting down next to him. It’s small enough that Chenle has to throw a thigh over Mark to fit and usually this touchiness wouldn’t _mean_ anything but Mark is tipsy and a little clingier than normal and Chenle’s mind is clouded with red strings and his newfound feelings for a stupid canadian and it’s just too easy to overanalyze everything.

“I’m not very good at gifts,” Chenle excuses as Mark begins gently undoing the tape, careful and tender in this as he is all things. “I don’t… usually get people gifts, but I wanted to surprise you.”

“I’m hella surprised,” Mark replies. “I didn’t expect it but I’m really touched, thank you man.” The paper comes undone, and Mark unfolds the hoodie inside. It’s light blue and embroidered with the design of a bouquet Chenle had had Yukhei help draft for him in the centre. Yellow carnations to protect his heart, just a little, but also flowers that mean love, friendship, luck, and appreciation, all bundled together with a wreath of wild leaves.

“Sorry is it-- is it not your style?” Chenle asks, worried at Mark’s silence. “It’s magical, you know, so it’s a ward of good luck and protection and stuff but I also just-- I dunno. I wanted to make you something personal.”

“Chenle this is… _so_ cool man, really.” Mark turns to him with the puppy dog eyes that makes Chenle’s heart seize up in his throat. “I’m… I’m really speechless. You made this for me?”

“I mean, yeah.” Even now Chenle can see a few wonky threads and loose parts and he doesn’t know if the hoodie fits and he remembers getting Renjun to help him perfect a hundred designs until they settled on the right one. Even now there’s a pile of hoodies with unfinished designs under Chenle’s bed because he wanted to make sure for Mark it was perfect and it still isn’t but, maybe that’s okay. “Happy birthday man.”

“Thank you.” Mark is smiling his cute smile that makes his eyes all crinkly, and their faces are close and Chenle thinks, _I should kiss him_.

And then he doesn’t.

Sunny hops up onto Chenle’s shoulder and gives a high-pitched shrill.

“Sunny says happy birthday too,” Chenle tells him, watching Sunny hop over onto Mark’s shoulder to peck affectionately at the hair behind his ear.

“Aw thanks Sunny,” Mark coos, patting the top of his head. There’s a quiet moment of silence, then Mark looks at Chenle and says, “Can I ask you something?”

Chenle’s heart pounds in his chest, and he swallows. “Anything.”

“I know I said not to worry about it, but…" Mark leans in, voice lowering. "Does Jaehyun have a red thread? 'Cuz I think he’s tryna confess to me and I need to like, be prepared to reject him, y’know?”

“I--” Oh. “Which one is he?”

Mark points him out, doing vape tricks on the deck where he blows smoke rings around his beer bottle.

“Yep.”

“ _Dangggg_ ,” Mark clicks his tongue. “That’s gonna be awkward.” He scratches his nose. “The bad ending route of my birthday.”

“You could just accept,” Chenle tells him, palms sweaty. “I mean, you like him, right? That’s why there’s the string. How do you know his feelings aren’t genuine?”

“I liked him for like, a day at a party because I was drunk and lonely three weeks ago,” Mark corrects. “And now I’m stuck with these feelings but I know when they’re real and when they aren’t, ‘cuz it’s a little different on both ends.”

Chenle swallows, getting sweatier. “How so?”

Mark opens his mouth, then pauses for a moment, searching for his words.

“Okay so-- the first time I realised I was cursed,” Mark starts, turning closer to Chenle. “It was with my best friend in year ten. I realised I liked him and then, two days later he confessed to me, even when looking back at his interactions, he’d never acted any different with me until I liked him.

“And we dated for a bit, y’know? We tried and it just…” Mark’s expression goes distant. “It didn’t _feel_ right. It felt like he was acting out this role of someone who wasn’t the guy I’d liked to begin with. I could’ve sworn I had no feelings for him anymore but it’s like my body disobeyed my thoughts. That’s when I remembered the fact that I was meant to be cursed and, well…”

“Oh,” Chenle says. “I’m sorry. It must’ve sucked.”

Mark shrugs, because his optimism prevents him from being weighed down by anything and it is, unfortunately, another quality about him Chenle likes. A lot.

“It isss what it issss,” Mark quotes. “I’m kinda over it now but whatever, y’know. Talking to you about the threads and stuff has really helped me realise when it’s the curse and when it isn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Chenle stares down at the grass, frowning. “I wish I could just get rid of it for you.” Maybe Chenle isn't the great witch his mother had always promised he would be, if he can't even solve a curse, let alone resist succumbing to it.

“We’ve still got plenty of time,” Mark tells him, bumping their shoulders. “And like I literally _just_ said, man, you’re still helping heaps.” He smiles, then stands, taking off his hoodie to replace it with the one Chenle had just gifted him. It fits perfectly. “C’mon, let’s go get you another juice and you can watch me reject Jaehyun.”

Chenle snorts, but lets Mark pull him up with a hand around his wrist all the same, the red thread between them just thickening, ever-so-slightly, noticeable to Chenle only because he’s spent so long looking at it.

After making sure a tipsy Renjun makes it home in one piece, Chenle trods up the stairs while nearly tripping over threads because he isn’t looking, staring at a selfie of Mark in the hoodie Chenle had given him that he’d sent after he left.

_thanks for making my bday even better haha_

“God I like him so much,” Chenle announces, and dramatically flings himself into the bathroom to yearn.

He opens his phone just to stare at it again in the morning, Mark’s usual patchy shaving and his messy hair and the pineapple juice stain on the hoodie. He twirls their red thread between his fingers and feels it beat in time with Chenle's heart.

"Lele--" his mother opens the door. "Are you coming down for silk-song--"

Chenle screams.

"PLEASE KNOCK?!" he yells, ducking under the covers to hide himself. " _MUM_."

"I'm sorry!" she replies, giggling behind the half-closed door. She peeks through, grinning. "You don't have to be embarrassed, Lele, it's perfectly normal--"

"Stop," Chenle whines, burying his face in his hands. It feels like the talk they had about Chenle's first _special wet dream_ all over again. "I don't want to talk about this!"

"Chenle." His mother gives a fond smile, sitting on the edge of his bed and cupping his cheek. "You don't have to hide it. I won't tease you." Chenle looks at her. "...Too much."

He groans, throwing himself backwards and frowning at the red thread still spun between his fingers. His mother eyes it curiously.

"Though I do want to ask who's on the other end…"

"Nope!" Chenle sits up again. "We're not doing this."

She laughs. "Okay okay, I'll leave you alone.” Her eyes narrow “If you promise to come to silk-song." She stands. "No excuses this time."

Chenle winces, but he knows a witch’s bargain when he sees one.

"Fine," Chenle mumbles, hunching his shoulders and dragging his feet like the reluctant teenager he is as his mother forces him downstairs to join in with the congregation of his aunts. With his red thread out in the open, they tease him and poke his cheeks but his mother clicks her tongue and tells them to let the tapestry tell, and they leave him alone.

Chenle sits cross-legged in front of the loom with his arms folded over his chest.

"Let's get this over with."

"Chenle," his mother scolds. "Show some respect. It's family tradition." He grumbles, but sits up a little straighter, facing the loom and watching it spin.

It's been a while since he's let his fortune be told, and watching the frail red thread get spun in isn't preventing his regret. He's worried the tension might snap it at any moment, but it's a thread of fate; it weaves through the tapestry with ease until it's finished, and his mother hangs it up on the wall for all to devour.

“What do you see?” she asks him, the usual question that always fills him with a deep sense of dread and failure ever since he became a teenager and realised he’d _never_ see anything in the thread, not like this.

But the feeling never comes.

“Nothing,” he admits. “I see nothing.”

His mother smiles, soft and fond. She takes his hand in her own and runs it along the movement of the threads, tracing out the shapes.

“There is greatness in your future,” she tells him. “Change. You are still growing to fill your destiny, but it’s waiting for you. You feel restless and uncertain, but your home is always waiting for you.” She stops then, eyes sparkling as their hands trace out the red line cutting through the fabric. “Love, too?”

“ _Mum_ ,” Chenle hisses.

She laughs.

“Don’t be afraid of what will be,” she tells him, her eyes glazed over with magic in a way that Chenle has always envied. Xihua, on her shoulder, crawls down over their hands, resting on a certain spot on the fabric. “Nor of what _is_. Acceptance of what has been is not the same thing as defeat; come to terms with this, and you will change the world.”

Chenle shudders, as she pulls back and tears her seam ripper through the tapestry, allowing the silken threads to dissipate. She squeezes his arms, wrapping him in a hug.

“And what if I do fail?” Chenle asks her, voice small. “What if I’m not the great witch you always divined I’d be?” He thinks about his mediocre grades, and Mark’s curse, and Renjun’s white thread. Thinks about the tapestry he can’t see anything but shapeless blobs in and the red string around his heart.

“Oh Chenle,” his mother says, squeezing him harder. “I never thought you’d be a great witch because of the threads. I think you’ll do great things because you’re _you_.”

“But I--” Chenle’s voice cracks. “I’m not good at anything. My magic is weird and useless and I can’t even unravel some stupid curse--”

“Lele,” she interrupts, and cups his cheeks. “You’re only nineteen. You’re not even twenty, let alone _fifty_. Weren’t you listening to the threads?” She clicks her tongue. “You’re still growing. You have sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years ahead of you to do great things. Just give yourself time.”

“And even then?” he asks quietly. “If I don’t do great things by then? If I don’t change the world--”

His mother laughs, pinching his cheek.

“Then living a fulfilling life is a feat within itself, don’t you think?” Her eyes fall to his red thread. “I only want you to be happy. That’s an accomplishment in itself.”

It’s raining outside, bucketing down in sheets of water without pause or hesitation. Sunny perches on the windowsill and watches the water rivulets trace out threaded veins on the glass, tipping his head in contemplation. Renjun watches him with a smile.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go?” Chenle asks.

“I’m just not ready, I think.” Renjun twists his bedsheets beneath him. “Is that bad?”

“No, of course not,” Chenle is quick to add. “It’s your choice. Graveyards are.... It’s a lot.”

Renjun sighs, turning back to the window. “This is so stupid and morbid,” he mumbles. “Can we talk about anything else?”

“Uh, sure,” Chenle offers, knowing Renjun needs the distraction today. He spends enough time dwelling on Zhu’s death as is; he doesn’t need it on the anniversary, too. “Do you want me to tell you about how my mum saw the red thread and thoroughly humiliated me?”

Renjun snorts. “That checks out. How’d it go?”

“Welcome back to watchmojo top ten most embarrassing moments of my life.”

“More embarrassing than that phase where you had a crush on Kun?”

Chenle grimaces. “Don’t remind me.”

Renjun laughs. “Have you told Mark about the thread yet?”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because it’s literally the reason why you know each other,” he deadpans. “You’re so stupid sometimes, seriously. He deserves to know if you really believe you’re affected by the curse too.”

“I know that, but…” Chenle sighs, throwing an arm over his eyes. “I don’t know.” He thinks about his tapestry and his mother’s guiding hands. Love and greatness in his future, but can he have both? “Even if it’s not the curse, what if breaking it affects all red threads regardless, or--”

“Oh my god,” Renjun cuts in. “You can’t live your life like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like freaking out as if everything is going to go wrong.” Renjun shakes his head. “It doesn’t hurt to have faith in the tapestries, Chenle. Sometimes good things happen too.”

“And what if they don’t?” Chenle counters, gripping the white thread cut around his ribs with equally white knuckles. “What if I fuck up a good thing and unravel the threads and make everything worse?”

“That’s the beauty of torn cloth, Chenle,” Renjun says, and traces out a vibrant green thread around his pinkie that Chenle had never noticed before. One of his new human friends, maybe? “You’ll always find new threads to replace old ones and fix the hole.”

“I don’t want new threads,” Chenle says, letting out a long breath. “I just want Mark. I think. God that’s so gay to admit.”

Renjun laughs. “Then he deserves to know that.” He softens. “Trust in the threads, Chenle. Even when they break,” he touches his throat, “they’re there for a reason, and if they’re not, then…” He grins. “Just make one up. It’s _your_ fate, after all.”

Chenle holds the seam ripper between sweaty palms, twirling it over his knuckles. When he’d texted Mark, _i need to tell you something_ he hadn’t expected his reply of, _i need to tell you something too._ Chenle, like any person riddled with gay panic, had spiralled into overthinking within an instant. Does Mark know about his feelings? Does he hate Chenle for it? Is he going to tell him to cut the thread because of the curse?

At least if he does, Chenle is prepared for it. If Chenle comes clean and Mark rejects him then it’s fine, he’ll cut the thread; that’s what the seam rippers for. If he doesn’t… well… Chenle feels like a naive little boy for entertaining the thought, but he just can’t help it.

But then he opens the front door to Mark in the hoodie Chenle had gifted him, his glasses lopsided and a hand raised in greeting as he says, “Yo.” And Chenle knows that worrying about Mark is pointless. He would never hate Chenle, not even for this. A boy covered in red thread and untarnished by black silk.

“Hey,” Chenle replies, breathless, and steps aside to let Mark in. “Spider-man?”

Mark grins. “I’m up to the last mission. _Less geddit_.”

Following Mark upstairs, Chenle’s palms only grow sweatier as Sunny twitches in restlessness on Mark’s shoulder, the seam ripper a heavy weight in his pocket. It’s not a tool Chenle often uses, given that its better for tearing long strings of seams. In embroidery, the tool can be harsh and unforgiving --Chenle would rather go back and retrace the threads, but maybe that approach doesn’t work on this curse. It’s his last resort. If it means freeing Mark of all his threads, even Chenle’s, then so be it. Chenle just wants to make sure Mark is happy.

“You had something you wanted to tell me?” Mark prompts as he switches on the PS5 and bounces on the edge of Chenle’s bed, controller in hand.

“You can go first,” Chenle offers, wiping his sweat on the inside of his jeans.

“No you can.”

“No no, you.”

Mark rubs the back of his neck and Chenle wonders why this feels so fucking _awkward_.

“Uh,” Mark starts, avoiding eye contact. “I just-- there’s something I should have told you a while ago and I feel bad because you probably already realised it and I’ve been keeping it from you.” He frowns down at the controller and Chenle thinks, _oh my god. He knows_. His heart is pounding, fingers tightening around the seam-ripper, prepared for Mark to tell him his feelings are just a part of the curse after all. “But… well, I bought a PS5.”

Chenle blinks. Stares.

“What?”

“You probably saw it in my living room, I’m sorry.” Mark hunches his shoulders in guilt. “I didn’t wanna tell you because I thought I should’ve saved up to pay you instead but you’d never asked for payment and I like playing games at your house with you so I didn’t tell you that I already beat spider-man at home, man, but at least this way we can play games together online sometime so please don’t be mad at me?”

Chenle is speechless.

“You’re mad, aren’t you?”

“What?” He blinks back into focus. “No, I’m just... That’s not what I expected at all.” Chenle smiles, fond and amazed by this dumb boy. God he likes him so much. “I really don’t care, Mark. You’re so cute.” He reaches out to pinch his ear, endeared.

“What did you think I was gonna say?” Mark asks, eyebrows pinched together as Chenle’s hand stays on his neck.

“I thought you were gonna say something about our red thread.” His brain catches up to his mouth. “Uh. I mean--”

“Our… what?”

“What?” Chenle pulls back.

“What???”

“What?”

“Stop saying _what_ ,” Mark hisses, and his eyes go wide. “We have a red thread?”

“Maybe…”

“For how long?”

“A few weeks, give or take…” Chenle mumbles, avoiding eye contact. “I’m sorry. I should’ve broken it when it formed but I…” He swallows, Sunny ducking his head inwards to hide. “I didn’t want to.”

“Why would you break it?” Mark asks.

“Because… the curse? My job?” Chenle offers. “Wouldn’t you want the ingenuine feelings gone?”

“Bro,” Mark says, and takes Chenle’s wrist where there green thread is still wound, forcing Chenle to look at him. “You’re so dumb.”

“Wh-- I’m dumb?” Chenle complains. “You’re the one going on about all the people who have liked you and hurt you because you knew it wasn’t real! I didn’t want to be one of them!”

“Then don’t be,” Mark tells him, and a smile blooms on his face. “Renjunnie said you were oblivious but I didn’t realise how much. I literally told you I can tell when the feelings are real and when they aren’t, man. That was me dropping hints."

“How was I meant to know that was about me!”

Mark just keeps laughing, the absolute asshole.

“Danggg, the curse usually makes my crushes stupid but you are like that all that on your own, huh?”

“Shut up,” Chenle hisses, and shoves Mark while he laughs, falling back onto the bed. “I can’t stand you. This is humiliating. I’m gonna break our thread out of spite now.”

“Okay,” Mark says, which startles Chenle and he looks down at him, frowning. Mark takes Chenle’s hands and intertwines their fingers. “You said real threads can’t be broken easily, right? So you can try.”

“Wh--” Chenle goes red. “What?”

“Try,” Mark tells him, squeezing. “I want you to realise that this thread isn’t because of the curse.”

Chenle hesitates, eyeing the thread between their chests, because what if it breaks? He _likes_ liking Mark; he likes _Mark_. He doesn’t want to lose these feelings, even if they’re fake.

But Mark is looking up at him with a genuine smile, completely faithful that their feelings for each other aren’t because of the curse, and Chenle so desperately wants him to be right.

He materialises the thread between them, and pulls.

And pulls, and pulls, and _pulls_ , the thread shifts and extends but doesn’t break, and Chenle keeps pulling, confused by this thread which should be taut suddenly growing in length, until he begins to realise the affect it’s having on Mark’s chest. Mark, too, looks down in amazement as their red thread acts as the fraying seam in an old scarf, unravelling the mess completely. Chenle keeps pulling, until all the other threads have dropped off --even the broken, frayed ones fall to the ground in miasmatic clumps.

They both sit there in stunned silence as Chenle pulls, and Sunny, too, flutters to tug at loose ends that get stuck until all the red threads are gone completely, and all that’s left is Chenle’s, and the sutures on Mark’s heart.

It’s a chinese character, or at least Chenle _thinks_ it is, but the sutures are done in a slightly different stroke order which Chenle assumes makes it hanja. It’s a simple character: _end_ , and as the sutures fall away too, Mark inhales like he’s breathing for the first time.

“Um,” he says, breaking the thick silence. “Did that just…”

“M-maybe?” Chenle asks, blinking at the mess now dissipating along his flower sheets. “Oh my god,” he blurts in realisation. “We fulfilled the terms of the curse.” He pauses. “That was so fucking easy? Why didn’t I think of that?!”

“Does that mean we’re not having kids?”

“Shouldn’t we’d adopt?” Chenle points out. “And even if we didn’t, obviously we’d use my genetics so our child would be a witch.” Mark is smiling at him. “What?”

“You’re really talking about having kids with me when you haven’t even kissed me,” he says, and his smile grows wider. “That’s pretty gay, dude.”

“You’re infuriating.” Chenle crosses his arms and turns his back towards Mark. “I don’t think you deserve it now.”

“Noooooooo,” Mark wraps his arms around Chenle’s waist, his chest flush over his back, and it makes Chenle _burn_. “You can’t deny me after that dramatic confession and stuff, man.”

“Dramatic confession? That was not how I’d planned it!”

“So it just tumbled out of you, huh?” Mark’s eyes go all crinkley as he smiles, and the red thread between them, completely unbothered by any others, thrums. “That’s _really_ gay.”

“Oh my god shut up,” Chenle breathes out, and kisses him.

It’s clumsy and awkward, because spontaneous kisses are harder in real life than they are in the movies. It’s brief, and firm, their teeth clack and neither of them move their mouths, but Chenle pulls back and Mark goes, “Ughngf?” The playstation controller tumbles out of his hand and onto the floor, but neither of them move to pick it up.

“You’re nearly at the last boss,” Chenle whispers, licking his lips as his eyes flick to the screen.

“I know,” Mark says. “I beat it at home, remember?” His fingers curl into Chenle’s t-shirt. “But I still played it at your house because I wanted to spend time with you, and you let me. If that doesn’t prove the red thread is real I don’t know what does.”

It makes Chenle laugh, because it’s just so _stupid_ , and he can’t resist leaning in again. Mark’s mouth is warm, and surrounded by patchy stubble against Chenle’s cheeks, but his kisses are as attentive and gentle as the rest of him. He cups Chenle’s jaw, and Chenle thinks, _I could die happy here_. The sunlight turns golden through Chenle’s bedroom window, and the red thread between them thrums. Chenle is terrified of it, of how it weaves his future and what it means, if the curse could return if they ever _fail_. But worrying when it comes to Mark Lee, Chenle has learnt, will get him nowhere. The future has always been something Chenle can never read or control even when he tries to; all he cares about is right now.

“Did that feel real enough for you?” Chenle asks, breathless without any reason to be. Mark’s glasses are still lopsided and his breath smells a little bit of pizza, but Chenle doesn’t care.

“I’m not sure,” Mark tells him, and his eyes drop to Chenle’s lips. “Do it again?”

“That’s.. A very interesting case, Chenle,” his professor says, handing Chenle his notes back with an amused smile. “But I’m not sure I can justify giving you extra credit for dating a client.”

Damn it.

“How’d it go?” Mark asks as Chenle exits the office, standing up against the wall and pocketing his phone in his embroidered hoodie. Chenle makes a fart noise and gives a thumbs down.

“Didn’t hurt to try,” he supposes, sliding an arm over Mark’s shoulder as they walk down the hallway. “All that effort for nothing. No credits, no money, nothing.”

“You got a boyfriend out of it?”

“Meh.”

Mark shoves him; Chenle laughs.

“Don’t make that a habit by the way,” Mark grumbles. “Dating all your clients.”

“Shut up.” This time, it’s Mark’s turn to laugh. “You’re my only exception, snookums.”

“Blegh.” Mark grimaces. “That just reminds me of Taeil’s phase of the curse where he called me baby names all the time.”

“So you don’t like it?” Chenle asks, turning to Mark and intertwining their fingers. “Babe.”

Mark predictably flusters, and Chenle laughs at him. He’s so cute and easy to tease, it’s adorable. Chenle kisses the stubbly corner of Mark’s mouth, then grins.

“You’re awful,” Mark mumbles, but he’s more embarrassed than mad, and it makes Chenle grin even wider. “I’d break up with you, but Doyoung said the curse might come back.”

“Is that the hexwitch?” Mark nods. “Really?”

“Yeah, apparently the fate of curses are fickle and can come back if the terms are broken again.”

“Oh _noooo_.” Chenle flings a hand over his forehead. “Then I guess you’ll have to be in love with me forever. Luckily I’m so incredible and easy to love.”

“Shut up.”

Chenle grins, and leans forward for a brief, self-indulgent kiss, tugging him along.

“C’mon,” he nudges. “We’re gonna be late.”

Mark stumbles after him, exasperated, but is soon distracted by the campus for witches as he cranes his neck around, eyes wide at each and every display of magic and all the familiars scampering after their partners. Sunny is quietly napping in Mark’s hood on a bed of grass strands he’d woven together, still and quiet and home.

“Okay, so Kun has the cat familiar,” Mark reiterates, “Leon, and Yukhei has Bella the dog.”

“Correct.”

“Kun likes planes, and music, and Yukhei is a hedgewitch, so plants is a good topic, but veganism isn’t.”

“Also correct.”

“Okay, I think I’m getting a hang of this.” He nods to himself, looking at Chenle with his usual wide-eyed innocence. “Do you think they’ll like me?”

“Mark, everyone likes you.” Chenle rolls his eyes. “I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t. You literally had a magical issue of too many people liking you.”

“But that was different,” Mark whines. “I dunno man, I’m nervous. Kun is a warden they’re like, crazy powerful. What if he banishes me into a hell dimension?”

“I don’t think he’ll do that,” Chenle mumbles. “Unless you like, kill Yukhei in front of him Kun is harmless. Mostly.”

“Mostly,” Mark groans, head in his hands. “Being a boyfriend is so hard. This is like meeting the parents all over again.”

“You’ve met my parents!!” Chenle protests. “They love you!!!” Granted it’s hard _not_ to love Mark when he comes to Chenle’s house all dressed up and his voice cracks on every word, but _still_. His mother trusts in the thread -- _typical_ \-- and his Dad was just happy if Chenle was. Humans are much simpler creatures. “My mum is _wayyyyy_ scarier than Kun, trust me. Kun’s a giant teddy bear.”

“A giant teddy bear with the ability to open portals to hell?”

“Yep!”

Mark pales. “I’m doomed.”

“You’re so dramatic.” Chenle rolls his eyes, taking both of Mark’s hands and swinging them between them. “Renjun will be there too, okay? It’s just dudes hanging out at a very nice apartment filled with magical plants. No big deal.”

“You’re right,” Mark concedes, which makes Chenle giggle. “I’m just nervous. I wanna be like… a cool boyfriend, y’know?”

Chenle grins like the dumbass he is.

“You’re the coolest,” he says, and kisses Mark’s cheek. “But you’ll never catch me saying that on record.”

Mark shoves him.

“Speaking of meeting the parents, by the way,” Chenle prompts , just as they’re rounding the block to Kun’s apartment. “My mum asked if you wanted to come to silk-song on Sunday. Family tradition and all that. It’d mean a lot to her if you came.”

“Uh, I mean I’d be happy to but…” Mark trails off, eyebrows furrowed together. “I thought you hated it?” He smiles, a lopsided thing. “The only spellweaver to hate fate.” He nudges his knuckles against Chenle’s ribs.

“I do,” Chenle answers. “Or-- well, I still think it’s unreliable, but I dunno.” He curls his finger through their red thread, and pulls Mark’s teasing hand into his. “There’s something okay about it, sometimes.”

“Then I’ll be there.” Mark grins. “Maybe I can finally beat that boss in spider-man after.”

“Meaning I’d have to stop kissing you for ten minutes?” Chenle pouts. “Unlikely.”

“True. Oh hey, do you think you could swing off of fate threads like spider-man does?” Mark says suddenly, his face widening in delight. “That would be so cool, man. Maybe that’s another hidden magic of yours.”

Chenle laughs. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah but I’m _your_ idiot.”

“Yeah,” Chenle grins, and curls his fingers through Mark’s embroidered hoodie to kiss him. “I guess so.”

They pull apart only because Sunny lets out a loud chirp and Chenle feels a thread tugging at his ribs, seeing Renjun a few floors above them leaning over the plant-encompassed balcony.

“You’re disgusting,” he calls down, an unimpressed Leon flicking his tail beside him. “I liked gay panic Chenle better.”

“Hey,” Chenle shouts, and materialises the green thread between them in an attempt to whip Renjun with it. It only flails around pathetically in the wind as Renjun laughs, telling them to get inside before he tells Kun.

“Okay if Kun sees you defiling me he will throw your ass in a hell dimension,” Chenle says, tugging Mark to the buzzer. “C’mon.”

“D-- Defiling?” Mark squeaks. “I thought you said he was just a teddy bear?”

“Yes but with the hell powers we’ve been through this.”

“Witches are so fucking scary, man.”

Chenle pulls Mark up the front step, and grins, a hand circled around his green-threaded wrist.

“It’s okay, I’m teasing.” He squeezes. “My aunts didn’t predict an early death in your future, right? So you’ll be fine.”

Mark frowns. “I thought you don’t believe in divination.”

“I don’t, but I believe in you.” Chenle kisses him, soft, gentle and sure. Mark returns it eagerly. “Time to make everyone fall in love with you again, Mark Lee.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> [ title ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77PzXCKDyVQ)


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